


wander past the distance

by winterfire (fishtank)



Category: IT (1990), IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Slow Burn, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-03-25 20:22:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13842306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishtank/pseuds/winterfire
Summary: Eddie is staring at him like he’s grown an extra head. “Except we’re not kids anymore, Richie. I can’t just run away with you; I have a job, responsibilities. As do you, I assume.”Alternatively: the one where Eddie lives, Richie has a midlife crisis, and the two of them take a cross-country road trip to work through their issues.





	1. Derry, ME

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the 2017 timeline with characterizations and plot points informed by a combination of the movie and book, probably with a bit of the miniseries thrown in for good measure. I'm mostly following canon for the adult parts of the novel, except that 1) Eddie survives with full use of both arms and 2) the Losers get to keep their memories. There might be a couple of other little details tweaked for the sake of making the story work, but all the other important aspects are the same.
> 
> Additional tags and warnings are to be added in future chapters. As far as this part goes, there's some canon-typical violence and one usage of a homophobic slur.

_you and me are in a lot of trouble_  
_and somebody’s gonna burst our bubble_  
_your husband, my wife_  
_my marriage, your life_  
        - the mountain goats, going to maine

 

There isn’t much by way of a celebration after they drag themselves out of the sewers, bloody and exhausted but alive against all the odds, carrying Audra’s limp body between them. The monster is dead, but so is Stan. Mike is recovering from a life-threatening injury, and Bill’s wife is unresponsive. And to top it all off, they emerge to a city in meltdown, much of downtown Derry flattened by a freak storm that Eddie can only assume was brought on by Its demise. If there’s a silver lining, he supposes, it’s that they blend right in; panicked people covered in grime and blood are everywhere, like extras from some disaster movie, screaming for lost loved ones or else wandering around with blank, dazed expressions.

The Townhouse has been reduced to little more than a pile of rubble, but the hospital is far enough away from the epicenter of destruction that it’s still in one piece, and so that’s where they head. Ben goes straight to Mike’s room to fill him in while Bill gets Audra admitted, and with nothing else to do Eddie, Richie and Beverly claim a corner of the waiting room to sit and wait for news.

Miraculously, they’re all relatively unscathed, aside from the various cuts and scrapes they’d picked up in the sewers. Eddie’s head is still pounding something fierce from where It had thrown him into a wall and Bev has a nasty-looking gash on her arm, but the place is filled to the brim with people sporting considerably worse injuries; even if any of them wanted to see a doctor, they’d have a long wait. The smell of blood and human misery mingles with the sharp antiseptic scent of _hospital_ , making Eddie feel vaguely nauseous. He’s always hated hospitals, thanks to the seemingly endless stream of unnecessary and invasive procedures he’d been forced to endure as a child. Some part of him half-expects the ghost of Sonia Kaspbrak to pop up at any moment and tell him it’s time for his endoscopy.

All in all, he’s relieved when Ben returns with four cups of coffee in a cardboard tray, grateful for anything he can latch onto to take his mind off the surroundings.

“Mike says the storm first started around the same time as we went into the sewers,” Ben tells them, settling himself into the plastic seat next to Beverly. She favors him with a warm smile as she accepts her coffee and Ben goes faintly pink around the edges, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and looking for all the world like the bashful kid Eddie first met almost three decades ago.

“Jesus,” Richie says, looking with alarm at the chaos surrounding them. “Do you think we caused all this?”

It isn’t a particularly comforting thought; that even in attempting to do some good, they might have inadvertently caused a whole lot more bad fortune to befall the citizens of Derry.

“ _It_ did this,” Beverly says firmly. “Not us.”

“At least there’s an upside,” says Ben, a grim smile pulling at his mouth. “We don’t have to worry about Henry anymore. It’ll probably be days before anybody finds him now, and when they do they’ll probably just assume he was killed in the flood along with everyone else.”

Henry, right. Somehow, among all the other crazy shit that’s gone down in the last few hours, Eddie had forgotten all about him – forgotten that he’d _killed_ him – but now it all comes flooding back. In an instant, he’s back in his room at the Townhouse, Henry’s weight pinning him to the carpet, Henry’s thick fingers wrapped around his neck, aiming to crush the life out of him. Warm blood spilling over his hand, the soft give of flesh as he thrust the broken Perrier bottle blindly into Henry’s gut. He can feel his throat beginning to close up and fumbles for his inhaler a split second before he remembers, _oh yeah,_ he doesn’t have it anymore. He flung it straight down the Spider’s gullet, and all his spares are back at the Townhouse along with Henry’s corpse, buried under three storeys worth of debris.

_Not like you really need it anyway,_ a snide voice at the back of his head reminds him. For some reason, that only makes the feeling of breathlessness worse, and he clenches his hand in the fabric of his pants to try and ride it out, hoping his wheezing at least isn’t too noticeable. Apparently he has no such luck; Richie is shifting around in the chair next to him, his eyes radiating concern from behind his glasses.

“You okay?” Without waiting for an answer, he takes Eddie’s face in his hands the way he used to do when they were kids and Eddie forgot his inhaler – or, later on, when he was trying to kick the habit for good after finding out the truth about his “asthma”, and Eddie wonders distantly how in the hell he’s let himself backslide so far. “Come on, breathe with me, Eds.”

He doesn’t know why, but it helps; focusing on the in-and-out of Richie’s breathing, trying to sync his own to match. “Don’t call me that, fuckface,” he manages as the panic starts to subside, and Richie’s face breaks open on a relieved grin.

“There he is.” He pats Eddie’s cheek once before letting go, and Eddie misses his warmth immediately, feels pathetically bereft without the sensation of Richie’s skin on his. He takes a sip of his coffee to distract himself, grimacing at the taste of what appears to be lukewarm dishwater.

They don’t talk so much after that, each of them lost in their own thoughts as they wait for news on Audra. Eddie guesses he must drift off at some point, because the next thing he knows Richie is nudging him in the side, telling him not to fall asleep in case he has a concussion.

“You know that’s just a myth, right?” Eddie says around a yawn. He’s pretty sure he isn’t concussed, anyway; he’s got a hell of a headache and he’ll probably have a bruise to match come tomorrow, but his thoughts don’t feel muddled or confused. Quite the opposite: it’s like a fog has been lifted from his mind and he’s finally seeing things clearly for the first time in years. Maybe ever.

Still, it takes him another second or two to realize that Richie’s arm is around him, and he feels his face heat at the picture they must make. He wonders if Richie is aware that they’re unconsciously mirroring Ben and Bev sat opposite, Eddie tucked into his side with his head against Richie’s shoulder, or if he just doesn’t care. He thinks he should probably move away, put some much-needed distance between them, but he’s too warm and comfortable and selfishly he wants to hold onto this for as long as he possibly can, until reality comes crashing back down around his ears.

He makes himself sit up when Bill finally comes out from Audra’s room, looking like he’s aged about ten years in the last few hours. The others follow suit, and it would be comical under less dire circumstances, the four of them snapping to attention at the presence of their fearless leader.

“How is she?” Bev asks. There’s a clean white bandage on her arm now; Eddie supposes some passing nurse must have patched her up while he was taking his impromptu nap.

“Physically, fine,” Bill says, shoulders slumping as he sits down heavily on Richie’s other side. “All her scans came back normal; there’s nothing wrong with her. But mentally… it’s like she isn’t even in there anymore. Like whatever she saw, it was more than her brain could handle and she’s just… checked out.”

“The Deadlights,” Beverly whispers, and Eddie feels Richie shudder against his side. Richie had looked into them, Bill too, but Audra… whatever It had done to her, It must have given her the full dose, just like Beverly all those years ago. That was how they’d found her: floating a good six feet off the ground, eyes blank and unseeing. Ben had brought Beverly back with a kiss when they were children, but Bill must’ve tried the same thing at least a dozen times over with no effect. Eddie doesn’t know if it’s because they’re older now and the magic doesn’t work like it used to, or if Audra was exposed for longer, or if she just isn’t made from the same stuff as Beverly. He doesn’t suppose it matters.

“Yeah,” Bill sighs, presses the heels of his hands against his closed eyes. “Look, I appreciate the support, but there’s no sense in you guys staying here all night. You should go and get some rest.”

“Go where, Big Bill?” Richie asks, raising his hand like he’s in a classroom. “In case you’ve forgotten, our hotel no longer exists.”

“I passed a motel on my way into town, out by Mike’s old farm,” Ben says. “With any luck, it should still be standing.”

By some miracle, the motel in question has rooms available when Richie calls ahead to check, and so that’s where they make their beds for the night. Eddie had thought the Townhouse was a step down from the accommodations he’s used to, but this place makes it look like the Ritz in comparison. Still, it’s a place to sleep, and he’s so beyond tired that he can’t bring himself to care about the mold growing in the corners of the ceiling or the cigarette burns on the carpet.

He feels vaguely uneasy once the others have all said their goodnights and he’s alone in his room, paranoid that some psycho is going to break the door down and attack him –

_\- gonna kill you, babyfag –_

– but he tells himself to get a grip. It is dead, and Henry is definitely dead, and the threat is fucking over even if his fight or flight response doesn’t quite seem to have gotten that memo yet. Looking for a distraction, he turns on his cell for the first time since he arrived in Derry, wincing as the display informs him that he has twenty-seven text messages, thirteen missed calls and five voicemails. Ignoring the rest for the time being, he hits play on the latter: the first message is from Joey at the office, letting him know that the Tom Cruise job Eddie bailed on went off without a hitch. The others, unsurprisingly, are all from Myra, and all variations on the same theme. _Eddiiieee, when are you coming home, I’m scared, why won’t you answer the phone Eddiiieeee._

His wife’s voice coming out of the tinny speaker grates on his last nerve, and as much as he can’t wait to put as much distance between himself and Derry as humanly possible, the thought of going back home to her suddenly seems equally unappealing. At the same time he feels oddly guilty, even though he has no real reason to. It’s not like he’s out here having an affair.

_You might as well be, cozying up with your old pal Richie like that. Don’t pretend you weren’t loving every second of it, you sick freak._

If he’d held onto any remaining illusions that he was straight – or at least, that he’d managed to thoroughly and permanently repress his homosexuality through years of self-medication and denial – those illusions had been well and truly shattered the moment he’d laid eyes on Richie again and remembered their adolescent bond that could only be described as _flirtatious,_ the potential for something more that always seemed to hang in the air but never quite came to fruition. He just prays that he isn’t as obvious with it as Ben is whenever Beverly so much as looks at him – although who is he kidding, he’s probably worse.

He toys with the plain gold wedding band that’s sat on his ring finger for the better part of a decade now, studying his reflection in the spotted mirror. He sees what he always does – a small, tired man who looks like he could use some sunlight and a good meal – but he also sees somebody who’s been through hell and come out the other side still standing. He slides the ring all the way off and flexes his hand to get used to the feeling – it feels freeing, he decides, like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. If he could withstand the sheer fucking craziness of everything he’s been through in the last few days then surely, _surely_ to Christ he can muster the courage to leave his sham of a marriage and start being true to himself.

When he goes back to New York, he decides, he’ll sit Myra down and tell her that he wants a divorce, explain gently but firmly all the reasons why they should never have gotten married in the first place. It’ll be tough, but he’ll get through it, and he’ll be a better man because of it. But first, sleep beckons.

\--

_Eddie can’t move._

_He can’t raise his arms or kick his legs; can’t even turn his head. The only thing he can do is stare blankly up at the white ceiling above him._

_He can hear a woman crying somewhere outside of his immediate field of vision, loud ugly sobs that are somehow horribly familiar. “Eddie, how could you do this to me?” The woman asks, and then Myra is hovering above him, her face blotchy with tears._

Do what? _Eddie wants to say, but he can’t move his lips to speak._ I haven’t done anything, Marty.

_“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” Myra says, only now she’s his mother, and her voice is thick with tears but her eyes are cold and flat like a shark’s. “You’re just sick, that’s all. You’re sick, but we’re going to make you better.”_

Make me better how? _Eddie wonders, but then his mother is leaning closer and he can’t move or fight or scream. Utterly helpless._

_“This is for your own good,”_ _his mother warns him, and now her eyes are red like blood, like glowing coals (like_ Its _eyes), and she punches with fingers like talons through the skin underneath his ribcage until she’s reaching_ inside _his chest, tearing through membrane and connective tissue as she searches out her prize. The pain of it is indescribable, and somewhere off in the distance he can hear a sound like the banging of wood on bone._

_Something pulls loose inside of him, and then she’s holding it aloft, a dark red lump of meat about the size of his fist, wet and glistening, still pulsing slightly in her hand._

_Eddie stares at his own heart, and the pain stops. He doesn’t feel anything at all._

_In the distance, the knocking gets louder._

_“There,” his mother says, her voice fat with triumph. “All better.”_

Eddie wakes up, his heart beating wildly but thankfully right where it should be, and his only coherent thought for several seconds is _what the fuck._ He thinks he would have preferred to dream about the Spider, Pennywise, fucking Henry; at least those things would have been expected, would have made some sort of sense, unlike whatever the hell _that_ Freudian psychodrama had been.

It takes him a moment to realize that he can still hear knocking, and in his disoriented haze he panics, thinking that his nightmare has somehow found a way to follow him back into the waking world. Then rationality kicks in, and it occurs to him that somebody is probably outside his door.

“Eddie. Eds. Eddie Spaghetti.”

_Jesus Christ._ Eddie rolls his eyes to himself as he shuffles out of bed, raking a hand through his hair and tugging on sweats in an effort to make himself look halfway presentable. Of fucking course it’s Richie. There’s nobody else who could inspire this exact blend of exasperation and fondness in him, especially not at this hour of the morning. His wedding ring winks at him accusingly from the bedside table where he’d left it the night before.

“Edward. Edwin. Eduardo—"

“ _Yes?_ ” Eddie yanks open the door to find Richie waiting expectantly outside his motel room, somehow still looking unfairly good in the stupid I Heart Derry t-shirt he’d picked up at the hospital gift shop. There’s no denying that Richie as a teenager had been sort of lanky and awkward and never seemed to quite be in full control of his limbs, but he’s matured into somebody who would be considered attractive by any sane person’s standards: all tall and broad-shouldered, bright, clear eyes that still shine with intelligence and humor behind his glasses. Even his crooked nose and terrible facial hair only add to his charm, and Eddie feels distinctly unimpressive by comparison.

“Finally,” Richie says, directing an easy grin his way. “I was about to run out of names.”

“Will wonders never cease,” Eddie mutters dryly. It’s something else that’s taken him by surprise; the ease with which they’ve fallen back into their old banter, like they’re picking up where they left off at eighteen. “Did you… want something?”

Richie clears his throat and shuffles his feet, suddenly looking at everything but Eddie’s face. If Eddie didn’t know better, he’d say he was nervous. “You, uh, you want to get breakfast?”

_Just say no, Eddie,_ shrieks the voice in his head that sounds far too much like his mother. _Nothing good will come of it, and there’s no sense prolonging the inevitable. Say your goodbyes now, put that ring back on your finger and go back home to your wife._

_Shut the fuck up, Ma,_ Eddie thinks with a savage kind of joy. Out loud, all he says is, “Sure. Breakfast sounds great.”

* * *

Asking Eddie to breakfast had been a spur of the moment decision on Richie’s part, one that he’d put exactly zero thought into until he was standing outside Eddie’s door, but now that they’re here he has to congratulate his past self on making the right call. He wonders if there’s a sight in the world more enchanting than Eddie Kaspbrak first thing in the morning, still sleep-soft and rumpled, picking half-heartedly at a bagel and glaring into his coffee like it’s personally wronged him. There’s a thin red line running down from his hairline to his eyebrow and dark, finger-shaped bruises around his throat that make Richie wish Henry fucking Bowers was still alive just so he could kill him all over again – objectively, Eddie looks like shit, but Richie thinks he’s still the cutest goddamn thing he’s ever laid eyes on.

“It feels different to last time,” Eddie says now, lowering his voice and leaning forward conspiratorially even though the diner is mostly empty and nobody is paying them the slightest bit of attention. “I didn’t forget about you guys until I moved away, but everything else started fading pretty much as soon as we got out of the sewers. This time it’s… clearer. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling the memories aren’t going anywhere.”

Richie had wondered about that too, and he can’t help but feel relieved at the confirmation that he isn’t the only one. He’s never been good at this part, the coming down; he supposes the principle is the same whether he’s been performing a two hour stand-up set or battling a shapeshifting monster clown. He’s still all keyed up with nervous, hyperactive energy, like his body isn’t quite sure how to behave normally now that the immediate threat is over. He can’t seem to stop himself from fiddling with his napkin or adjusting his glasses, unused to the weight of them on his face after so many years of wearing contacts.

“Maybe it’s because It’s actually dead this time,” he suggests, shoving a hunk of syrup-drenched pancake into his mouth. Eddie shoots him a look that’s two parts disgust and one part amusement before he goes serious again.

“Is It, though? Dead, I mean.”

Right. Eddie had missed that part, slumped on the filthy cavern floor with cartoon birdies flying around his head after getting thrown face-first into a wall of solid rock. Swallowing with some difficulty, Richie rushes to put his mind at ease. “Trust me on this, Eds, It’s _definitely_ dead. Bill went full caveman and ripped Its goddamn heart out. It was pretty fuckin’ wild.”

Eddie doesn’t exactly look reassured. “I wish I could have been there with you guys at the end, you know? I feel like I didn’t really contribute a whole lot.”

“Hey, are you kidding me? We never would have been able to finish It off if you hadn’t burned half Its face off first. I still don’t know what the hell you did, but you saved my life. Bill’s, too.”

The Deadlights are the one thing that Richie doesn’t remember with a whole lot of clarity, and he’s grateful for that. Whenever he tries, he just gets this nauseating sensation of freefall, like he’s careening through the universe at the speed of light towards whatever unknown thing lies in wait for him out beyond the black. All he knows is that if it hadn’t been for Eddie, he’d probably still be out there somewhere, lost inside his own mind like poor Audra.

Eddie laughs self-deprecatingly, making patterns with his coffee mug in a puddle of spilt liquid on the table. “My inhaler. I used to think it tasted like battery acid when I was a kid, so I just… made myself believe that’s what it was. Lucky for me it worked, or we’d probably all be dead right now.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You didn’t even know if it would _work?_ ” Richie is agog. He knows that acts of bravery which occasionally cross the line into sheer reckless stupidity are kind of Eddie’s _thing,_ but charging an extra-dimensional monster with what basically amounts to a spray bottle has to be the dumbest fucking thing he’s ever done. “Jesus Christ, Eddie. What the hell were you thinking?”

“Honestly? I wasn’t really thinking at all,” Eddie shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “I heard you, and I just acted on instinct, I guess.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your voice, in my head. You were screaming for help, actually. It was,” the corner of his mouth lifts as he adopts Richie’s expression from earlier, “ _pretty fuckin’ wild._ ”

Richie has no recollection whatsoever of whatever the hell Eddie is talking about, and he gets that falling feeling in his gut again when he thinks about it. They don’t talk about it, but he’s well aware of the psychic bond or whatever the hell it is that connects all the Losers. He wonders if the others had heard him too, if he’d deliberately reached out to Eddie or if he’d just been desperately flinging SOS signals into the ether in the hopes that somebody would pick them up. He’s not sure which option makes him feel worse.

“I don’t remember.”

“I figured.”

Richie clears his throat, tries to get things back on track. “Well, not that I’m not grateful, but seriously, Eddie, what if it hadn’t worked? You could have died.” He can still feel it now, the icy dread that had gripped his heart when he’d landed back in his body and seen Eddie sprawled on the floor fifty feet away. He can’t even begin to imagine how much worse he’d feel right now if Eddie hadn’t started moving again a few seconds later.

“But I didn’t,” Eddie says mildly, “and it did. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Richie says sincerely. Eddie blinks, clearly not expecting it. “I still think you’re a fucking idiot, but like I said: you saved our lives. You’re kind of a badass, you know that, right?”

Now Eddie looks downright flustered, scoffing and running a hand through his hair. Something about the movement catches Richie’s attention, and his curiosity is definitely piqued when it clicks what’s wrong with the picture in front of him.

“You took off your wedding ring.”

Eddie jumps a little, a vaguely guilty expression crossing his face. “Oh. Yeah. I, um, I’ve decided that I’m gonna tell Myra I want a divorce.”

“That’s… good?” Richie ventures cautiously. Eddie hasn’t talked much about his wife, but when he had, he’d done so with the same guarded expression Beverly had worn while talking about her piece of shit husband, and Richie is more than capable of reading between the lines. It doesn’t exactly take a genius to see that Eddie is a desperately unhappy man, the pressures of adulthood and a loveless marriage all doing their bit to extinguish his inner spark. Still, Richie’s seen a few echoes of the feisty little spitfire he knew as a kid over the last few days, and he’s all for anything that might bring _that_ Eddie back into being.

“God knows I never should have married her in the first place,” Eddie is saying. “I must’ve told myself I was going to call it quits a dozen times, but I could never quite bring myself to go through with it. I guess I figured it was easier to just keep going through the motions, rather than stirring things up and causing a whole load of trouble. But with everything that’s happened since coming back here, it’s made me realize… I’m not happy, you know? I want to be happy.”

_I could make you happy,_ Richie thinks wildly. _I’d give you the whole fucking world if it’d make you smile, you have to know that._ “You deserve it,” he says out loud.

“I don’t know about that, I still feel like a total heel. I hate this fucking town, but there’s a part of me that wants to stay here just so I never have to go home and face the music. How’s that for pathetic?”

“You should come to L.A. with me,” Richie blurts out, only realizing what he’s said once the words are hanging in the air between them.

Eddie snorts, apparently under the impression that Richie is less than serious. “Yeah, right.”

“No, I mean it,” Richie says, warming to his theme now. It might’ve been another one of those split-second impulses when he’d said it, but he has to admit the idea has its appeal. “We could drive the whole way, make a big thing of it. Take a road trip out west like we always talked about.”

They used to spend hours planning it, Richie remembers; watching the world go by from Eddie’s bedroom window and plotting their escape. _“I wish I could just get away from this shitty town, my mom, all of it,”_ Eddie would always say, and Richie would respond without fail, _“Let’s do it. Tomorrow, let’s just pack up our stuff and fucking go.”_ By the time “tomorrow” rolled around, of course, they would always find some reason not to follow through – their collective lack of money, the desire to stay with their friends – but that never stopped them from making the same promise all over again the next time things got rough.

Clearly, times have changed, because the Eddie of now is staring at him like he’s grown an extra head. “Except we’re not kids anymore, Richie. I can’t just run away with you; I have a job, responsibilities. As do you, I assume.”

Richie waves his hand dismissively. “A job, yeah. Responsibilities – that’s up for debate.” It would have been a different story back in the days where he had a regular breakfast slot on the radio, but the truth is he’s between projects right now, and ever since he did that Apatow movie a few years back he’s considered successful enough that he can afford to be picky about the roles he takes on. Not that Richie is complacent; he knows he’s damn lucky, but he’s worked his ass off to get where he is and he figures he’s long overdue for some time off. The agency won’t like it – Steve had thrown enough of a fit when Richie told him he was heading back to Derry for a few days – but they won’t do much to try and stop him, either.

Eddie makes a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat. “Okay, well, we’re not all movie stars. I can’t afford to just blow off work like you apparently can.”

“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you CEO of a multi-million dollar company? _One of this generation’s most exciting young entrepreneurs,_ as I believe Forbes put it. You might not be a movie star, but I’m pretty sure you can take a vacation without bringing about the end of the world as we know it.”

Eddie gapes at him, slack-jawed. “How did you…?”

“Oh yeah, I Googled you. All of you, actually. Did you know that Bill posted erotic fiction online before he got his publishing deal?”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

Richie shrugs. “Look it up yourself if you don’t believe me. Come on, Eds, what do you say? You, me, the open road… It'll be fun, I promise.”

Eddie bites his lip, like he’s actually thinking about it. “I don’t know, Richie. I _do_ need to talk to Myra, much as I’d love to just bury my head in the sand about the whole situation. I owe us both that much.”

“Okay, so we’ll fly out to New York first. I’ll do some sightseeing while you ditch the old ball and chain, and then we’re golden.”

“Beep beep, asshat,” Eddie warns. His tone says that Richie is on thin fucking ice, but after a second or two his expression softens, regarding Richie with a sort of quizzical intensity that makes him want to squirm in his seat. “Where is this coming from, Rich?”

A fair question, especially considering that the idea had only come to Richie a few moments ago. Ordinarily he wouldn’t be pushing so hard, but he _knows_ Eddie, even after all this time; if he thought that Eddie genuinely wasn’t interested, he’d back off, but he can see that Eddie is tempted. And then, of course, there’s the fact that Richie has been half in love with him since they were thirteen years old, too dumb and socially inept to actually _do_ anything about it until it was too late, until they’d both left town and forgotten the other ever existed. Richie makes a living from pretending to be other people, and even when he isn’t actively portraying a character he’s always putting on a show: _Rich Tozier, life and soul of the party, confident and in control and never anything less than one hundred percent okay._ That guy is just as much a work of fiction as any of his more outlandish characters, but lately he’s been having a hard time remembering who he is under the mask, if there even _is_ anyone under there. These last few days in Derry have been the most real he’s felt in decades, even when he was scared out of his mind, and he knows that that’s mostly down to the rest of the Losers, Eddie most of all. He’s always been at his best when he has Eddie to bounce off against; it’s like he’s been performing solo all this time, and never even realized he was actually part of a double act until he was reunited with his other half. He doesn’t know how else to explain it – they just _work_ together. They fit.

Of course, he’d literally rather die than say any of that out loud, so what comes out when he opens his mouth instead is, “I missed you so much. I didn’t even know it was _possible_ to miss somebody you don’t even remember, but there it is. And we’ve already lost Stan –“ he cuts himself off abruptly. Thinking about Stan is too painful, but at the same time none of them have really had a chance to process the loss with everything else that’s happened. He knows he’ll have to deal with it eventually, but now isn’t the time or place for opening that particular wound. “I just… don’t want to lose you too,” he finishes somewhat lamely.

Eddie just looks at him for a long, uncomfortable moment in which Richie can literally feel his face turning puce. He’s never been any good at talking about his feelings, which is just one of the reasons he’s never managed to hold onto a relationship for longer than a year.

“What about the others?” Eddie asks eventually, face carefully unreadable. “I notice you didn’t invite any of them to breakfast.”

Honestly, Richie kind of suspects that at least two of their group will be wanting some serious time to themselves, if the body language that’s been flying between Ben and Bev is any indication. Then there’s the fact that Mike is still recovering from a getting stabbed, and Bill has Audra to attend to – but he knows that all of those things are just excuses, that he wouldn’t be asking any of them to drive across the country with him even if he thought they’d say yes. He loves them all with an intensity that honestly scares the crap out of him, and he’d willingly take a bullet for any one of them, but.

“It’s different with you and me. It’s _always_ been different. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, because I know you do.”

Eddie gets this hunted, cornered look in his eye, like he’s about to get up and bolt from the table, and Richie starts to think that maybe he’s misread this whole situation, that maybe he doesn’t know Eddie all that well at all anymore.

“Never mind, it’s a dumb fucking idea,” he backtracks hastily. “Just forget I said anything –“

“Okay.”

Richie blinks. “Okay, you’ll forget it, or…?”

“Okay, as in _okay._ Let’s do it.” Eddie grins a little wildly, in a way that makes him look about ten years younger. “I do have some conditions, though.”

“Shoot.”

“One, we pick up my car in New York. And two, I’m driving.”

Richie raises his eyebrows, hoping he doesn't look quite as giddy as he feels. “Listen, I know you’re Mr. Bigshot Driver Man now, but you’re not gonna drive the whole way from New York to California. That’s like three thousand miles, dipshit.”

“I think you’re seriously underestimating my stamina, but fine. We’ll split it seventy-thirty.”

“Sixty-forty, and I pick the music,” Richie counters, trying not to spontaneously combust at _underestimating my stamina._

Eddie regards him through narrowed eyes for a moment before he relaxes and offers his hand across the table, businesslike. “Deal.”

Richie spits in his own hand before he shakes on it, delighting in Eddie’s disgusted shriek and the string of four-letter words that follow. The waitress glares over at their little scene, but Richie doesn’t care. He’s grinning so hard, he feels like his face is about to split in two.

“Fuck, yeah. Richie and Eddie’s Excellent Adventure, here we come.”

\--

They leave Derry two days later, along with Ben and Beverly. Richie feels guilty as hell for going while Mike is still in the hospital, but he’s getting stronger every day now; the doctors are confident that he’ll make a full recovery, and at any rate Bill will be on hand to monitor the situation for as long as Audra is in the same hospital.

In spite of his guilt, Richie is itching to get going as soon as possible, and he’s willing to bet the same holds true for the other three. They’ve already drawn more than enough suspicion as a group of outsiders appearing during Derry’s hour of crisis, and Eddie in particular is twitchy with the increased police presence crawling all over town. It should be funny, Richie thinks – _Eddie Kaspbrak, fugitive from the law_ – but it really, really isn’t. He can still picture the scene that met them back in Eddie’s room at the Townhouse following his run-in with Bowers: so much blood everywhere, more than you’d think would fit inside a human body; Henry’s corpse still twitching on the floor and Eddie in the middle of it all. If the Townhouse hadn’t been flattened by the storm, he would almost certainly be facing murder charges right now.

They all congregate in Mike’s hospital room before they leave, clasping hands to make their circle one last time. Richie closes his eyes, feels that power, that _connection_ flow through him, and for a moment he’s thirteen years old again. His palm stings where there should be nothing but decades-old scar tissue; he can feel the wet smear of blood against his skin, the weight of Eddie’s cast pulling his left arm down slightly. For a moment, he swears he can feel a seventh presence in the room, Stan taking his rightful place between Ben and Mike.

He opens his eyes, and the moment is gone. Stan isn’t there, Eddie’s arm is unbroken. There’s no blood – the skin of their palms is smooth and whole, the old scars barely visible. Richie feels oddly bereft when Bill lets go of his hand, the circle breaking up; on his other side, Eddie holds on for an extra second or two before following suit, just long enough to make Richie wonder whether it was deliberate.

“Goddamn, I love you guys,” Mike says. There’s the quiet sound of sniffling, and Richie knows that at least _one_ of them is on the verge of tears. Hell, he’s not so far off himself, and he feels an immediate need to diffuse the tension before they all start bawling their eyes out in the middle of Derry General.

“Even me?”

“ _Especially_ you, Trashmouth,” says Mike – and just like that, they’re all laughing. A teary-eyed kind of laughter that verges on hysterical, true, but Richie’s taking it as a win. They all take it in turns exchanging hugs before they leave, shuffling around each other in the small room. Bill claps Richie on the back as they embrace, firm and solid, and Mike kisses the side of his head when Richie leans awkwardly over his hospital bed.

The ride to the airport is short and mostly silent. Ben and Bev are headed to Chicago to spend a few days together before Ben heads out to oversee work on his latest building; they have about two hours longer to wait for their flight, but they walk with Richie and Eddie to the gate anyway.

“What are you gonna do, Bev?” Eddie asks when they get there, breaking the silence. “About Tom, I mean.”

Beverly frowns, blowing her hair out of her eyes. She hadn’t said much, after they’d stumbled across her husband’s mutilated body in the sewers, but then she hadn’t needed to. They’d all seen her bruises, the evasive look in her eyes whenever she’d talked about him. Like Eddie, her wedding ring had disappeared at some point over the last couple of days. _Good fucking riddance._ As far as Richie is concerned, Tom Rogan can rot down there.

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll file a missing persons report, but he’s a grown man. It wouldn’t exactly be out of character for him to skip town on me.” She smiles a little sadly as Ben pulls her closer. “I’m sure it’ll raise a few eyebrows, me coming back with a new man in tow, but mostly I’m worried about the label. It’s all my designs, but Tom was so involved with the accounts, _everything…_ I might just have to tear it all down and start from scratch.”

“You can do it,” Eddie says, with a certainty that Richie feels deep in his bones.

“So can you.” Beverly steps away from Ben’s side and pulls Eddie into a hug, and Richie is almost overwhelmed with the pride he feels for both of them, two abused kids who made successes of themselves despite the odds, clawing back their independence all over again. He turns to Ben, noting with some amusement the sappy, lovestruck expression with which he regards Beverly. It’s almost exactly the same as the one he’d worn when they were teenagers, with the sole exception being that he now wears it openly.

“Finally got the girl, huh, Haystack?” Richie teases, slinging an arm around Ben’s shoulders in an odd sort of sideways embrace.

“So did you.” Ben’s quick wit never fails to delight Richie every time he brings it out, mostly because it’s such a rare occurrence, and he laughs out loud.

“Hey,” Eddie protests, shooting Ben a wounded look over Beverly’s shoulder. Richie honestly isn’t sure whether he’s more put out at Ben indirectly calling him a girl or the implication that Richie “got” him.

“Don’t worry, Eds, I know you’re all man,” he says with a ludicrously over-the top wink. Eddie chokes and shoves at him as Beverly cackles with laughter, and Richie thinks, _I love these people._ He feels full to the brim with it, like he could float away on the feeling.

“Get over here, Marsh,” he says, and then his nose is filled with the scent of perfume and cigarettes as Beverly throws her arms around his neck, squeezing him tight. At the same time, he’s peripherally aware of Eddie and Ben sharing an awkward bro-hug that turns into something real and genuine about halfway through.

“Be good, boys,” Beverly says, pulling back to smile up at him. “Try not to kill each other.”

“I would never,” says Richie, at the exact same time as Eddie says, “Only if he _really_ annoys me.” The responding laugh is cut off by an announcement from the tannoy that their flight has started boarding, and Richie suddenly finds that he’s not quite as ready to leave as he’d thought. Bev tells them to make sure they pay her a visit if they find themselves passing through Chicago, and there’s another quick round of hugs, and then he and Eddie are being herded onto the plane. Richie feels emotionally drained as they settle into their seats, like everything they’ve been through is just now starting to hit him all at once.

“Hey.” Eddie touches the back of his wrist lightly. “You okay?”

Richie takes a deep breath and turns his hand over, threading their fingers together. He squeezes Eddie’s hand, allowing the contact to ground him. “Yeah. I’m just… really glad we’re alive, you know?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says softly. His smile, backlit by the fading sunlight streaming in through the window, is nothing short of breathtaking. “Me too."


	2. New York City, NY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay - I had a little more trouble with this chapter than I anticipated, but I truly do appreciate all the kind comments I've received on this story so far. It sounds cliche, but you guys make my day.
> 
> Please be aware that a lot of this chapter deals with Eddie's marriage, so there is some discussion of emotional and medical abuse.

_you’re the only motherfucker in the city who can stand me  
_       - st. vincent, new york

 

They touch down at JFK a little after 7pm, following a short and largely uneventful flight. Eddie’s never been wholly comfortable with planes – he’s not a big fan of surrendering control to some guy he’s never met and hoping they know how to keep the thing in the air – but he’s unprepared for the way that Richie turns a sickly shade of green and squeezes Eddie’s hand in a death grip as soon as they take off, wincing every time they hit a pocket of turbulence.

“You’re a nervous flyer?” Eddie asks once they’re safely back on solid ground, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. He doesn’t know _why_ he’s surprised, exactly, but for some reason it doesn’t fit with his mental picture of Richie, brash and fearless and constantly throwing himself headfirst into dangerous situations. 

Richie laughs weakly. “I wasn’t always. This flight I was on a few years back ran into some engine trouble and we had to make an emergency landing. Honest to God, I thought I was gonna die right there and then. I guess I’ve had some issues with the thought of flying through the air at thirty thousand feet ever since.”

Eddie is pondering this new piece of information, adding it to his understanding of the enigma that is Richie Tozier when Richie abruptly brightens, the mask of affability and supreme self-confidence siding back into place as smoothly as if it had never been gone. “But hey, the chick in the next seat was hot, so it wasn’t a total loss. Let me tell you, Eds, there’s nothing in this world quite like post-near-death-experience sex.”

“Oh my God,” Eddie shakes his head, unable to fully keep his smile from forming. At the same time, he can’t help thinking about their own recent brush with death, and he wonders if Richie is having the same thought. “You’re incorrigible.”

“You know it, baby.”

Eddie checks them into a hotel for the night, one that he’s used before on numerous occasions, too exhausted to make the trip to his house in Queens until tomorrow. They get adjoining rooms – satisfying their shared, unspoken need to not be alone while still maintaining a veneer of privacy and appropriateness – but that doesn’t stop Richie from lounging around on Eddie’s bed for most of the evening. They order room service and watch shitty movies on pay-per-view, Richie providing a running commentary and doing terrible impressions of all the characters, and for a while it’s almost normal. For a while, Eddie is almost able to forget about what he has to do when the sun comes up.

It’s almost midnight by the time Richie finally says goodnight and disappears behind a closed door. Eddie misses him immediately, selfishly wishes he’d just bitten the bullet and gotten them a double room. It would have been worth putting up with Richie’s snores just to be able to look over and see him in the next bed.

Eddie doesn’t have any more weird dreams – at least, none that he remembers – but he sleeps restlessly, in fits and starts that leave him more tired than if he’d just pulled an all-nighter. At one point when he gets up to use the bathroom, he could swear he hears Richie making soft noises of distress through the wall. It makes Eddie’s teeth itch with sympathy, with the need to go into the other room and comfort him, but he doesn’t want to overstep. They might have embarked on this crazy trip together, but he still doesn’t really know where they stand with one another. Richie had said something back in Derry about how their relationship was different to the others, but they haven’t talked about what that means, if it means anything at all. Hell, he doesn’t even really _know_ Richie beyond the basics, not anymore. They’re having to re-learn each other all over again.

After a moment or two, Richie quiets. Eddie releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and returns to his lonely, empty room to try and cram in a few more hours of fitful sleep before dawn.

\--

_Eddie felt it for the first time a few weeks after his fourteenth birthday, almost six months after their first encounter with It._

_He doesn’t remember, now, exactly what they were doing or saying at the time – only that they were in the Barrens, playfully bickering the way they always did, and Eddie said something particularly witty that made Richie throw back his head and laugh. He’s not sure whether it was the wild, unrestrained sound of that laughter or the sunlight hitting the angles of his face just right, but something about Richie in that moment triggered a low, sweet ache somewhere deep in his chest,  the first stirrings of adolescent desire._

_He found himself wondering if it was the same thing Bill and Ben felt whenever they looked at Beverly, and the thought panicked him. He wasn’t stupid – he knew what it meant to feel_ that _way about other boys, the derogatory words that got thrown around. Not just by idiots like Henry Bowers, but by people who actually mattered (people like his mother). Some half-buried memory started to come to life at the back of his mind – a rotting hand landing on his shoulder,_ I’ll blow you for a dime _– and he shoved it away before it could fully take hold._

 _Over the following weeks and months, he watched Greta Keene and the other pretty, popular girls at school, tried to picture himself kissing them, holding their hands and taking them to the movies. He would call to mind the image of Beverly sunbathing at the quarry the previous summer and try to remember if he’d felt that same irresistible tug of attraction towards her, or if it had just been simple curiosity at seeing a girl up close for the first time. He “borrowed” Richie’s_ Playboy _magazines (that Richie himself had “borrowed” from his father) and tried to convince himself that he felt something for the models whose photos were splashed across the pages, with their glossed lips and womanly curves. His mother found them one afternoon while she was snooping around his room and spent two days straight sobbing that puberty had ruined her sweet, innocent little boy, and even in the midst of his ongoing meltdown Eddie couldn’t help but think,_ oh, Mom, you have no idea.

 _And throughout it all there was Richie, laughing his stupid laugh and telling the same dumb jokes as always, only now Eddie couldn’t look at him for too long without his stomach doing that funny little flip. He’d almost certainly noticed Eddie’s weirdness, but it’s not like Eddie could_ tell _him what was going on. Worst case scenario, he’d be disgusted and never want to speak to Eddie again; best case, he’d be sweet and sympathetic as he let him down gently, and Eddie honestly wasn’t sure that was much better. It didn’t occur to him for even a moment that Richie might be having the exact same thoughts about_ him, _might be grappling with a similar dilemma of his own. Richie was too normal, too_ straight; _Richie talked about girls and sex almost constantly, and never gave any indication that he might lean in any other direction._

_He couldn’t admit what he was feeling, and he couldn’t seem to cure himself of it, either. In the end, the only thing he could think to do was to wait it out and hope that it was just some passing adolescent phase, that the feelings would go away on their own given enough time._

_They didn’t._

\--

Eddie stares down his own front door, debating whether it would be better to knock or walk right in and trying to work up the courage to do either. It’s a good door, he thinks; it matches the rest of the house. Large but not pretentiously so, tucked away from the rest of the neighborhood to allow privacy, with an elegant, old world charm despite having been built less than thirty years ago.

He used to think he was lucky, to have all this. Maybe his life wasn’t perfect, but it was secure and comfortable, the kind of comfortable that could only be obtained through a certain amount of wealth. He was a small town boy who’d built a successful business in a city where so many hopes and dreams came to die, and he’d done it with little to no outside help. That meant something. Only, now that he knew his success was largely due to the machinations of cosmic entities that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend, he couldn’t help feeling like that luck had soured somewhat.

 _Stop stalling. You’ve faced down literal monsters; you can talk to your wife_. _And you’re not going to knock on your own fucking door._

Before he can lose his nerve, he slips his key in the lock and steps inside. He’s only been gone for five days but he feels as though he’s walking into a stranger’s house. He’d told Richie that this was something he needed to do on his own, but now that he’s actually here, he’s starting to wish he’d allowed the other man to come with him. If nothing else, the moral support would have been nice.

“Eddie, is that you?” Myra is on him almost immediately, shuffling into view before he’s even got the door closed behind him. Her face is pale and blotchy, like she’s been crying, and Eddie feels a stab of guilt. “Oh, thank God. You couldn’t have called? I was worried sick, and – _oh my God what happened to your face?!”_

That last is spoken in a breathless rush, and Eddie is confused for a moment until he remembers that he’s still covered in bruises and scrapes from his adventures in the sewers. The fact that he isn’t more severely injured seems almost impossible given everything that happened back in Derry, but he supposes that to somebody who doesn’t know what went down, he probably looks as though he’s been through a meat grinder.

“I fell down the stairs,” he says somewhat lamely. Thankfully, Myra doesn’t question it, probably because she'd rather believe he's that much of a helpless idiot than the only other alternative: that he's lying to her.

“Poor baby, does it hurt? I’ll go get you some ice.” She clucks her tongue sympathetically, reaching for him with grasping fingers, and Eddie can’t help himself – he flinches away. Myra’s face falls. Her bottom lip quivers. Eddie feels about two inches tall. _There you go making her cry again, asshole._

He plasters a fake smile on his face, forces himself to start again. “Sorry, I’m just tired. Look, why don’t you go sit down? There’s something we need to talk about.”

If anything, Myra looks even more upset at this. “Eddie, you know it makes me nervous when you say things like that,” she says. Still, she follows easily enough when he ushers her into the front room. They sit down on the overstuffed couch with a foot of space between them, and Eddie takes in his surroundings as though he’s never seen them before. The room is modern and stylish, but it looks like a show home, not a space that’s been lived in for almost five years. The focal point of attention is a state-of-the-art entertainment system that he’d bought on a whim despite the fact that neither he nor Myra were big TV watchers, an ostentatious show of wealth to prove to the world that he doing just fine, thanks. There are no wedding photos on display – Myra hadn’t wanted them putting up when they’d moved, didn’t want the reminder of how much weight she’d gained since then, and Eddie had gone along with it all too readily. He has no desire to see his own fake smile hanging on the wall day in day out, telling him what a mess he’s made of things.

All in all, he can’t see a single thing in this room that would indicate _any_ kind of personality behind it, much less one that he would recognize as his own.

“Eddie, what’s wrong?” Myra asks in a small voice, bringing him out of his reverie. “You’re scaring me.”

Eddie takes a deep breath, trying to psych himself up. _Now or never._ He thinks of Richie waiting for him at the hotel, all the miles stretching out ahead of them from here to California, and it’s just the push he needs.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna come right out with it. I want a divorce.”

Myra stiffens beside him, her breath hitching. By contrast, Eddie feels as though a weight has lifted from his shoulders now that it’s out in the open, which in turn only increases his guilt.

“That isn’t funny,” Myra says, so sharply that Eddie almost does a double-take to make sure he isn’t talking to his mother.

“I’m not laughing,” Eddie mutters, scrubbing his hands over his face. He feels incredibly old all of a sudden. “I’m sorry, but I can’t – I can’t keep pretending like everything is fine, that wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”

 _“Why?”_ Myra wails. She’s really crying now, and he almost gives in to his knee-jerk reaction to say whatever will make it stop. He doesn’t think she does it on purpose to manipulate him, not like his mother did – she lacks both the guile and the self-awareness – but ultimately it doesn’t really make a difference. Her insecurities and his upbringing provide the optimum conditions for emotional blackmail to flourish. “Is it my weight? Because I can always try dieting again, I know it didn’t work before but I can do it this time, I’m sure of it. Or – or we can start being intimate again, if you want…”

“ _No!_ ” Eddie says this so forcefully that Myra actually stops crying, halting her nervous rambling. “Sorry, I just mean – it isn’t really anything you’re doing, or _not_ doing, it’s just – I’m the one that’s the problem.”

He cringes at himself, because – _it’s not you, it’s me? Really?_ It’s the truth, more or less, but that doesn’t make it any less of a cliché.

“I don’t understand,” Myra says. “What changed? Everything was fine before you went away.”

 _No it wasn’t,_ Eddie thinks sadly. _I was just too blind to realize how fucked up everything really was._ “Honestly, I realized some things while I was back home – some things I’d forgotten, others I think I _wanted_ to forget – but the bottom line is, I’m not happy. I don’t think I’ve been happy for a very long time, and I want – I _deserve_ to be with somebody I love, who loves me for who I really am. So do you.”

Myra stares at him with wide, wet eyes. “You don’t love me?”

Eddie winces. _Cruel to be kind,_ he tells himself, but when all is said and done he truly doesn’t want to hurt her. He could have spared them both a whole lot of misery and heartache if only he hadn’t married her in the first place. There’s a part of him that desperately wants to just come out with it, so to speak: _I can’t love you because I’m gay and I’ve spent the last twenty years so thoroughly repressing that fact that I wasn’t even fully aware of it until I almost died._ It would be a clean break, an easy out, but he still can’t quite bring himself to say it out loud. He isn’t there yet – and besides, it wouldn’t be the whole truth anyway. His relationship with Myra is fucked up for many, many different reasons, and the incompatibility of his sexual orientation is actually one of the tamer ones.

“I guess I don’t. I’m sorry.”

He isn’t sure what he’s expecting in answer to that – more tears, some yelling maybe – but Myra just continues to stare, almost as if she’s looking straight through him. “So what are you going to do?” she asks eventually, in a soft, even voice he’s never heard from her before. “Do I need to start packing my things?”

“What? No, of course not,” Eddie starts, aghast. “I wouldn’t just kick you out, Myra; I’m not that cruel. I’m actually – um. I’m leaving town again for a little while, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m taking a road trip out west with an old friend I ran into back in Derry. We’re staying in a hotel in the city tonight, so I’ll be back tomorrow to pick up some things before I go.”

“A road trip?” Myra interrupts. From her horrified tone of her voice, you’d think he’d told her he was planning to scale Everest in his birthday suit. “Eddie, you’re not making any sense. You’re sick, you can’t just go running off across the country. What if something happens?”

And there it is. The same damn thing he’s been hearing his whole life, whether from Myra or his mother: _you can’t play with the other boys, you’re too sick, you’re too fragile._ All so that they could control him, keep him exactly where they wanted him: trapped squarely under their respective thumbs. He can feel his throat starting to close over and he’s certain there must be an inhaler around here somewhere, probably within arms’ reach, but he doesn’t want to give her that leverage over him.

“I think I’ll take my chances,” he says weakly, standing up from the sofa and backing away towards the door. Myra starts to follow him, but Eddie holds up a hand to ward her off. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? I’m sorry, but I – I have to go.” He’s out of the room before he’s even finished his sentence, ignoring her calling after him as he makes a break for the front door.

Like a coward, he runs. He runs all the way out to the garage, where he can collapse inside the sanctity of his car, a 2013 Cadillac XTS that he’d bought new three years ago and maintained with near-fanaticism ever since. Myra has always hated it, says that it’s too flashy and asking to get stolen – and hell, she’s probably right, but it’s one of the few things Eddie has to show for his success that he’s actually proud of. He dreamed of owning a car like this ever since he was a kid, and it’s become something of a safe space for him when he needs to get away from Myra and his clients and every other fucked up thing about his life. Sometimes he’ll just climb inside and drive for hours, no real direction in mind other than _away_.

And now he’s invited Richie into that safe space, to share in the one thing that he can truly call his own. The thought should unsettle him, but he mostly just finds it exciting. Exhilarating.

In the glove compartment he finds a handful of maps that he rarely has cause to use, a pair of leather gloves and driving glasses, an almost-full bottle of Vicodin that he keeps in case of emergencies, and a spare inhaler. It’s the last item that he’s looking for, and he resents the fact that he immediately feels better after taking a puff even as he gratefully draws air into his lungs.

_Smoke and mirrors, Eddie. Sugar and water. You know it’s all in your head, so why can’t you let it go?_

Shaking his head, he fires off a quick text to Richie and then phones Joey to inform him he’ll be taking some more time off. Joey sounds surprised, but encourages him to take as much time as he needs, insisting they have everything under control. By the time he’s finished with the call, Richie has replied with his location, and Eddie feels a smile break out over his face as he reads the text, complete with a dumb smiley face emoji more befitting someone half their age.

Now that he isn’t in imminent danger of hyperventilating, he realizes that he actually feels good. He feels _free._ It isn’t a feeling he’s accustomed to, but it’s one that he finds he enjoys as he types out his reply.

_I’ll come pick you up. See you in twenty._

* * *

Richie doesn’t actually intend to spend his time in New York sightseeing, despite what he’d told Eddie. He’s visited the city plenty of times in both a professional and personal capacity, and he’s not exactly in the right frame of mind for playing tourist while Eddie is out there somewhere hashing things out with his wife. 

 _His wife, Jesus._ Richie still can’t wrap his mind around the idea, no matter how many times he’s confronted with it. He can understand why Eddie had wanted to talk to her alone, but all the same, he can’t help wishing he was there with him. A small part of him is afraid – maybe uncharitably so – that Eddie will end up getting cold feet and decide to stay with Myra after all. He knows how brave Eddie can be, how stubborn he is once he’s set his mind to something, but he also knows the toll that his mother’s toxic influence has taken on him. Even now, Richie would swear that he can sometimes see the shadowy hand of Sonia Kaspbrak directing her son from beyond the grave.

Either way, it’s out of his hands, and he needs to keep himself busy so he doesn’t obsess. The first thing he does is text Beverly and then Mike to let them know that they’ve arrived safely in New York, assuming they’ll pass on the message to Ben and Bill respectively. Then, figuring he can’t put it off any longer, he phones his agent in L.A. Steve picks up on the third ring, and judging by the tone of his voice, Richie isn’t exactly his favorite person in the world right now.

“Fucking finally, Rich, Jesus Christ. Where the fuck have you been?”

Richie winces a little, holding the phone away from his ear. He knows that Steve is a good guy at heart, and it’s not like he doesn’t deserve the verbal dressing down, but he hates to disappoint people. Still, he’s a professional shit-talker, so he can’t help the fact that what comes out of his mouth is: “Wow, it’s good to hear your voice. I’ve missed those dulcet tones.”

Steve snorts down the line. “Don’t give me any of that shit. You better be calling to tell me you’re headed on a flight back to California right the fuck now, or so help me God…”

Richie sighs, massaging his temple with his free hand. “Yeah, about that. I actually think I’m gonna need to take some more time.”

“What the fuck, Richie? I’ve got people handing me scripts every goddamn day, you think any of those directors are gonna wait for you to come back from your little vacation before they start making their casting decisions? You think you’ve got it made now that you’ve done a handful of B-list flicks, is that it?”

“It’s not like that,” Richie insists, wishing he had an Advil or ten to take the edge off the headache he can feel coming on. “Come on, Steve, you know me. When’s the last time I asked for any time off?” That’s a hypothetical question – they both remember the last time all too well. “I just need a couple of weeks, is all. Three, max.”

“Is this some sort of mental breakdown, is that what’s happening here?” Steve asks after a long pause. He sounds more concerned than angry now, and somehow that’s worse. “I can get you back on that rehab program –“

“ _No!_ ” Richie hisses it through his teeth, dropping his voice to a whisper even though there’s nobody around to overhear. “No, it’s nothing like that, I swear.”

“Is there a girl? A guy? Some pretty young thing taking you for a ride?” Steve is like a dog with a bone, and Richie rests his forehead against the cool Formica surface of the little hotel table, praying for strength.

“If you must know, I ran into an old friend back in Derry, and we’re spending some time reconnecting. That’s all.”

“Well, this friend of yours better be fucking worth it,” Steve says. “And I better see you in three weeks, or you can start looking for a new agent.” And without so much as a goodbye, he ends the call.

That particular item crossed off his checklist, Richie heads out into the city to pick up some clothes and other supplies for the trip, making a conscious effort to avoid the big name, touristy stores and instead stick to independent boutiques where he’s less likely to get recognized. He’s not exactly Beyoncé, but he’s been stopped in the street on plenty of occasions, especially now that he’s got a few movie and TV appearances under his belt. Normally, he’s only too happy to engage with fans – he’s always enjoyed attention, and he’s very much aware that he’s only got to where he is thanks to the will of the people – but part of the reason for this vacation is to get away from all that.

Not that he needs to worry, he thinks; he barely recognizes _himself_ the handful of times he catches his reflection in a storefront or dressing room window, bruises under his eyes from a night of fucked up dreams he doesn’t quite remember, the hated glasses still perched awkwardly on his nose. They’re a world away from the monstrosities he’d worn as a kid; he’d paid a pretty penny for them, and he’s aware on some level that they might even be considered fashionable among the college hipster demographic. Hell, half the remaining members of the Losers Club are now rocking a pair of frames thanks to the onset of middle age; Bill's lend him a distinct air of academic sophistication, and Eddie has bifocals for reading and driving that make him look downright adorable. Richie just can’t shake the association with routinely scheduled beatings from Henry Bowers and company, the ever present fear that a shard of broken lens would one day puncture his eyeball and blind him for life.

Still, he’s oddly reluctant to try and pick up some more contacts, probably for the same reasons he ends up poring over a rack of gaudy Hawaiian print shirts in a whole spectrum of colors that his current self wouldn’t be caught dead in. Some part of him wants to reconnect with the Richie Tozier of twenty years ago, who would have given an entire month’s allowance for just one of those stupid shirts and wouldn’t have given a fuck what anybody had to say about it. Christ, but Richie hates that kid, with his Coke bottle glasses and his buckteeth and his terrible jokes that were good for nothing but getting his face ground into the dirt. What a fucking loser he’d been.

He feels a pang of guilt at the thought, like it’s a betrayal of his friends and everything they’d stood for, because hadn’t they all been losers? The fat kid, the Jewish kid, the black kid, the gay kid, the poor kid, the kid with the speech impediment – they’d been a veritable who’s who of social pariahs, but they’d worn it like a badge of honor, and it had made them stronger.

But then, Richie’s hardly the only one who’s changed. Bill lost the stutter, Ben lost weight, Eddie married a woman, for Christ’s sake. Did that make them all sellouts? Or did they just grow up, let go of the things that held them back as kids? Thinking about it makes Richie’s head hurt; somewhere, he can hear the fucking clown laughing as It gleefully promises to put a tumor in his brain.

 _Fuck it._ He grabs a selection of the Hawaiian shirts, one in each color, and takes them up to the counter, ignoring the bemused look the cashier gives him as she rings them up.

“Hey, do I know you from somewhere?”

 _There it is._ “Do you watch a lot of porn?” Richie asks blithely, flashing her his most winning smile. “’Cause I’m in, like, all of it.”

The saleslady flushes beet red, and Richie feels like kind of a dick, but she doesn’t ask him any more questions as she takes his payment and hands him his bag full of horrible shirts, so he’s counting it as a win.

\--

Richie whistles long and low at the sleek black Cadillac pulling up in front of him. Half an hour ago, he’d been sitting in a Starbucks when Eddie texted to ask where he was, and now he’s being greeted by this gleaming behemoth of a car. At the wheel is none other than Eddie himself, looking frankly incredible in leather driving gloves and a pair of clip-on aviators that objectively should be dorky as hell but are somehow anything but. Richie shouldn’t be surprised, considering Eddie’s chosen occupation, but – hell, he still remembers Eddie’s _first_ car, a rustbucket older than their parents in a depressing shade of beige. _The boy done good._

“Nice ride, Eds.” He doesn’t even bother trying to keep the awe out of his voice as he climbs in the passenger side, slinging his shopping onto the backseat. The interior is just as impressive as the outside, all soft, buttery leather and rich mahogany paneling.

“Isn’t she?” Eddie flips the shades up with a grin and okay, _now_ he looks like a dork. Richie finds it oddly comforting.

“What’s her name?”

“Hmm?”

“Come on, Eddie, don’t give me that. Nobody calls their car a  _she_ without giving it a name.”

Bizarrely, Eddie goes almost as red as the cashier from the shirt store and mumbles something unintelligible. Richie was only teasing a moment ago, but now he’s downright intrigued.

“What? I didn’t quite catch that.

“Beverly,” Eddie repeats, looking for all the world like he’s trying to become one with his seat. “Some guy at the office asked me years ago what she was called, and I just panicked and said the first woman’s name that came into my head. I didn’t know – I mean, I didn’t even think I _knew_ a Beverly.” He sounds equal parts bewildered and affronted by the time he reaches the end of his spiel, and Richie cackles with glee.

“Bev will be thrilled. Can I tell her?”

“Can I stop you?” Eddie counters.

“Absolutely not.” As amused as he is, he can’t help being weirded out a little at the idea of it, that Eddie had a strong enough subconscious memory of the Losers to name his car after one of them. He wonders what other ways they might have influenced each other’s lives without any of the realizing it, and feels an overwhelming need to change the subject. “So, how’d it go with the wife?”

Eddie pulls a face. “It… _went._ It definitely wasn’t fun, but I’m glad I told her. It was a long time coming.”

“Good on you,” Richie says, ignoring the brief pang of guilt he feels for having even a shred of doubt that Eddie would go through with it.

“I said I’d go back in the morning to pick up some things. You can come with me, if you want.”

Richie knows that’s Eddie’s way of asking for his support, that he’s too proud to just come right out with it, but still, he can’t resist needling him a little. “I don’t know, I’ll have to check my schedule. I’ve got a pretty busy day planned for tomorrow.”

“Richie.”

“Kidding, Eds. Of course I’ll be there. But in the meantime, we’ve got another evening to kill in the city that never sleeps. You gonna take me out to dinner, or what?

Eddie does, in fact, take him to dinner, at a quaint little Italian joint just off the beaten track that oozes rustic charm and authenticity. Something about the low lighting combined with the wine and the way that an errant curl of hair falls _just so_ over Eddie’s forehead has Richie feeling decidedly lightheaded. It feels as though they’re on a date – which is plainly ridiculous and yet, once the thought has crossed his mind, he can’t shake it.

Eddie catches him staring and raises an eyebrow in question, wine glass paused halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“Nothing,” Richie says hastily. “Just… how’d you end up in New York, anyway? No offence, but it’s not exactly where I would’ve pictured you putting down roots.”

“Why, ‘cause it’s seedy and dirty and full of people spreading their diseases everywhere?” Eddie asks with a wry grin. It seems that he buys Richie’s cover, or is willing to go with it at the very least, and Richie breathes a silent sigh of relief.

“I wouldn’t have put it quite like that. But yeah, basically.”

“Honestly, that’s pretty much _why_ I decided to move here. My mom wanted me to move back in with her after I graduated college, and I knew she’d hate the idea of me living in the city. Anything that pissed her off was a bonus back then.”

“You rebel,” Richie says, unable to keep the fond smile from creeping onto his face. “What about now?”

Eddie shrugs. “I think a part of me will always love New York, but I wouldn’t mind a change. I kind of realized that I’m still letting my mother dictate my life by doing the opposite of what she would have wanted, and I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to start doing things on my own terms.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Richie says, and raises his glass in a toast. “To letting go of other people’s expectations of us.”

He can’t exactly relate to Eddie’s experience – his own parents, god bless them, were so laid back they were virtually horizontal, and would have supported him in whatever fruitless endeavor he chose to undertake so long as it made him happy – but he knows what it’s like to feel as though you’re not fully in control of your own life. He supposes that’s something they all have in common.

“It’s kinda weird, don’t you think? You drive famous assholes around for a living. I’m a famous asshole. I’ve visited this city about a hundred times; I could have used your company, for all we know. Hell, _you_ could have driven me, and we wouldn’t have even recognized each other.”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says slowly. “I don’t tend to drive clients personally unless they’re _really_ famous.”

“Eddie Spaghetti gets off a good one!” Richie crows, equally caught off-guard and delighted by the burn.

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says with a completely straight face, and for some reason that’s what sets Richie off laughing out loud. Eddie watches him bemusedly for a moment before he’s joining in, and that only spurs Richie on even more until the two of them are in near hysterics over nothing in particular. They attract more than a few stares from both the wait staff and their fellow customers, but Richie couldn’t care less. He feels lighter, _freer,_ than he has in years.

“God, I can’t even remember the last time I laughed like that,” Eddie says once they’ve finally caught their breath, wiping at his eyes with the edge of a napkin.

Honestly, Richie can’t either. Considering he makes other people laugh for a living, he hasn’t been doing a whole of it himself as of late.

“Well, stick with me, kid.” He finds himself slipping into a Voice; not one of the characters he’s become famous for, but something more akin to the dumb impressions he used to pull in his youth. “There’s plenty more chucks where that came from.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, still grinning, and Richie feels his stomach flutter in a way that has nothing to do with hunger.

\--

_Richie is hurtling through time and space towards the very edge of the universe. He doesn’t know what’s out there, beyond the black: just that something is waiting for him, something with teeth._

_There’s nothing he can grab onto to slow his trajectory; nothing around him but vast, crushing emptiness as far as the eye can see. He thinks he’s further out than anybody has ever been before, further out than anyone has even dared to imagine, and suddenly he can see those terrible lights on the horizon, a siren call pulling him in even as he resists with everything that he’s got._

Richie wakes in his hotel room, heart beating faster than the time he damn near OD’ed on coke at a Hollywood afterparty. The only thing he can remember from his dream is a fading impression of light, exactly the same as the night before and the night before that. In all honesty, it’s starting to get a little old.

He shoves his glasses on and stumbles to the bathroom, trying to avoid looking at his reflection as he splashes his face with water. He already knows how he looks; haggard and old, an aging has-been past his prime who needs to be put out to pasture.

 _Get a fucking grip,_ he tells himself, rolling his eyes at the melodramatic turn his own thoughts have taken. _You’re forty, not seventy. Still plenty of life in the old boy yet._

He doesn’t really mean to check in on Eddie before he returns to his own bed; it just sort of happens, and he’s slipping into the adjoining room before he can think about it. Eddie is, of course, fast asleep like any sane person should be; mouth slightly open and hair crushed against the pillow, messier than Richie has ever seen it in the daytime, at least not since they were kids. There’s a deep furrow etched between his eyebrows that Richie wants to smooth out with his thumb, and he clenches his fist tight to quash the urge.

Eddie murmurs something unintelligible and rolls onto his other side. Richie takes that as his cue to leave before he gets caught staring like a fucking creeper, swallowing past the lump in his throat as he pulls the door carefully closed behind him.

\--

“You sure you’re okay to come in with me?”

Richie studies Eddie’s marital home from the safety of the car. It’s a nice house; from the outside, at least, there’s nothing that would explain the sense of foreboding tugging at his gut, or the way that Eddie looks like he’d rather go another round with the clown than set foot inside.

“Eddie, it’s fine. How bad can she possibly be?”

Eddie snorts. “You remember my mother, right?”

“’Course I do. They say you never forget your first love.”

Richie almost expects a punch for that one, but Eddie actually laughs, just a little. “Beep beep, dick.” He squares his shoulders and takes a deep breath, seemingly gathering his strength. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

On the inside, Eddie’s house is about as clean and tidy as Richie would have expected, but there’s something almost sterile about it. There are no photos on the walls, nothing to indicate the personalities of its occupants; considering their radically different lifestyles, it’s almost eerily similar to Richie’s own L.A. bachelor pad in its emptiness.

“Myra? You home?” There’s no immediate response, and Eddie’s shoulders sag in relief. “Guess she’s not in.”

“That a good thing?”

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not happy about the way we left things, but I’m not exactly itching for another confrontation either.”

They make their way upstairs, where Richie mostly stands around and watches Eddie shove clothes into a duffel bag, trying not to think too hard about the fact that they're in Eddie’s bedroom that he’s been sharing with his wife for however many years.

“So I was thinking,” he starts, mostly to try and break the weird tension. “What do you think about heading for Atlanta once we’re done here?”

Eddie glances up from where he’s carefully folding a pinstriped waistcoat that Richie would kill to see him in. “I thought we were heading west? That’s like, fourteen hours out of our way. More with rest breaks.”

“Yeah, but,” Richie shifts uncomfortably, “I think we should pay Stan a visit.”

It’s something he’s been thinking about ever since they left Derry. A few weeks ago, he didn’t even know Stan existed; now, he can’t wrap his head around the fact that Stan is gone. He needs that closure, something as concrete as standing in front of a gravestone and saying his goodbyes. Even if the thought of it terrifies him.

“Oh.” Eddie’s eyes widen, his expression softening around the edges. “Yeah, no, that’s a good idea. Shit.”

They lapse back into silence after that, and they’re just about finished when there’s the unmistakable sound of a key turning the lock. Eddie gets a panicked, deer in the headlights look before he sets his jaw and heads back down to the foyer, Richie trailing awkwardly after him just as the front door opens and a large woman steps through.

Myra is only a few inches taller than her husband, nowhere near as tall as Richie, but the way that Eddie shrinks back from her gives the impression that she towers over him. Richie’s first thought is that Eddie wasn’t exaggerating the similarity to his mother; for a second he feels like a teenager again, standing before Sonia Kaspbrak as she chews him out for leading her precious son astray.

“Eddie, thank God, I knew you’d change your mind –“

“I haven’t changed my mind,” Eddie interrupts flatly. “I told you I was coming back to get some things, remember?”

He holds one of the bags up to illustrate his point, but Myra’s gaze is sliding over to Richie. “Who’s he?”

“Um. This is Richie, my friend that I told you about.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

Richie feels like he’s been slapped, reeling with the abruptness of the question. Apparently he isn’t the only one; Eddie’s head snaps around so fast that he could probably sue for whiplash.

“What? _No!_ Jesus Christ, Myra.”

“Please, Eddie, I’m not naïve. I know what people say about you, you know. I told myself it wasn’t true, but a part of me always wondered. You never want to touch me, sometimes it seems like you can barely _look_ at me…”

Eddie winces, and Richie is starting to feel like he _really_ doesn’t need to be a part of this conversation. “I’m not sleeping with Richie, okay? I might have been a shitty husband in a lot of other ways, but I never cheated on you. This isn’t about him; this is about me and you.”

“I just don’t understand,” Myra says in a small voice, and for a moment Richie almost feels sorry for her. Almost. “Why would you want to hurt me like this?”

“I’m not trying to – God, you really don’t get it, do you? I’m sorry for leading you on, okay, I really am, but you – Christ, you treat me like a child, like you’re my fucking mother. Keeping tabs on where I go, shoving medication down my throat because I can’t leave if I need you to take care of me. Well, guess what? I’m forty fucking years old, and I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I don’t need the meds, and I don’t need you. I never did; it just took me a while to remember that.”

A long silence follows in which the only sound is Eddie breathing like he’s just run a marathon, and Richie estimates he’s about thirty seconds away from starting to wheeze. Myra just stares at him, like she’s forgotten Richie is even there. Hell, _Richie_ isn’t even sure he’s here at this point; he feels as though he’s having an out of body experience, waiting for the bomb to go off.

“Eddie, you’re sick, you don’t know what you’re saying,” Myra pleads, but her eyes are starting to well with tears and Richie can tell from the defeated tone of her voice that she knows she’s lost.

“We’re going now,” Eddie says quietly but firmly, even as his breath takes on that distinctive whistling edge. “I’ll call you to work out the divorce.”

With that, he steps past his wife and out the door, leaving Richie to follow him to the car. About a hundred yards down the road, he pulls over and reaches across Richie to rummage in the glovebox, pulling out a green inhaler and taking a hit. It’s the first time Richie’s seen him with one since before their final confrontation with It, and it makes him vaguely sad.

“You okay?”

Eddie laughs a little breathlessly, resting his forehead against the steering wheel. “Yeah, not really. I probably shouldn’t have yelled at her like that. She’s not a bad person, not really, she’s just… messed up.”

“Yeah, aren’t we all?”

“It’s okay, you can ask. I know you want to.” Eddie sits up, cutting Richie a sideways glance. “How did I end up with her, right?”

“It’s not really any of my business…”

“I met her just after my mother died,” Eddie steamrolls on, as though Richie hasn’t even spoken, and it hits him then that Eddie wants – maybe _needs_ – to tell this story, not for Richie’s sake but his own. If that’s the case, Richie figures he can shut the fuck up and listen for five minutes. Besides, there’s no point denying that he really _is_ curious. “I was lost, I guess, and Myra wanted to take care of me, so I just… let her. I knew I didn’t love her, but I thought that maybe I could make it work, given enough time. At the very least, it might stop people asking questions.”

Richie’s pretty sure he can guess what sort of “questions” Eddie is talking about, given his reaction to Myra asking if they were having an affair; the way he'd vehemently denied that he was screwing Richie specifically while sidestepping the implication that he was into men in general. Still, he's not about to push; he figures that if Eddie wants to tell him, he'll do it in his own time.

“You have to understand, she wasn’t always that bad,” Eddie goes on, looking at Richie beseechingly. “She wasn’t like my mom, she really did think I was sick, but I think she liked me that way. And I knew what was going on, but there was a part of me that wanted that – that comfort, I guess. So I enabled her, or she enabled me, or – I don’t know, it’s all so fucked up. I wanted to leave so many times, but in the end I always figured it was easier not to rock the boat.”

“And then Mike called,” Richie says quietly.

“And then Mike called. And I remembered that summer, and you guys, and everything that we did. God, Rich, I felt so fucking stupid, you have no idea. I got away from my mother once, and then I went and fucking married someone exactly like her.”

“It’s not your fault, Eddie.”

Eddie smiles humorlessly. “No? Whose fault is it, then? My mom’s, for doing this to me in the first place? Its, for making me forget? Sorry, but I nobody made me ask Myra to marry me. Nobody made me stay with her. I did those things all by myself.”

Richie stares at him. “She took advantage of you when you were in a bad place, she fucking medicated you for years to keep you under control, that’s not okay –"

“Enough. It’s fine, Richie, really.” Eddie closes his eyes for a long moment; when he opens them again, his face is carefully neutral. “So, Atlanta?”

The tone of his voice says that the conversation about his marriage is over, at least for now. Richie could try to push it, but he’s pretty sure it would only lead to an argument, which is the last thing he wants. Especially when there's only going to be more difficult confrontations to contend with in the near future, and for a moment he almost wants to say _fuck it, forget Atlanta,_ but he's not quite that selfish. He knows he'd never forgive himself if he threw away the opportunity to say a proper goodbye to their friend because he's too chickenshit to let himself be emotionally vulnerable. Eddie would never let him, anyway.

“Sure. Take us away, Jeeves.”

Eddie fixes him with a look. "You do know Jeeves was a butler, not a chauffeur, right?"

"Actually, I'm pretty sure he was a valet, but whatever. Let's go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled somewhat with how to write Myra in this chapter; I do find her to be more sympathetic than Eddie's mother and King's misogynistic handling of her in the novel makes me uncomfortable, but she's still an abusive spouse whether she intends it or not. I hope that comes through in my writing, because I'm always somewhat leery of fics that paint her as a wholly innocent victim.
> 
> Richie's story about almost dying in a plane crash is from the book, and I always found it to be a neat little character detail. I hate flying myself, though, so maybe I'm just projecting.
> 
> Eddie's car: [x](http://www.motortrend.com/cars/cadillac/xts/2013/).


	3. Atlanta, GA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me a hot minute.
> 
> There is some fairly intense discussion of suicide in this chapter, so please be careful.

_all dead white boys say god is good_  
_white tongues hang out, god is good_  
      - iron and wine, sodom south georgia

 

The drive to Atlanta takes up the better part of two days, and with every hour that goes by, every mile of asphalt that disappears in the rearview mirror, Richie grows more and more on edge about what lies over the horizon. Being the person that he is, he has two principal ways of dealing with this unease: denial and distraction. He’s had plenty of practice when it comes to denial, and the universe has been kind enough to provide him with his very own distraction in the shape of one Eddie Kaspbrak.

You can tell a lot about a person from the way they drive, Richie decides, watching Eddie with his hands at two and ten on the steering wheel, as proper and correct as the day he’d passed his test. Of course, he’d expected Eddie to be a careful driver; that much doesn’t come as a surprise. What _is_ surprising is the way he hits the accelerator and fucking floors it down long, empty stretches of highway, the way he yells and curses up a blue streak whenever some asshole cuts him off. Eddie is cautious, sure, but there’s rage in there too, and just enough rebelliousness to make things interesting.

He quickly discovers that there are certain rules he has to follow while Eddie is his driver. Smoking inside the car is a big no-no, as is eating anything with a high risk of spillage or a strong smell that might linger on the upholstery. Eddie also places a moratorium on any and all jokes involving the name of the car after Richie’s first dozen or so comments on how well Beverly handles – which, okay, was maybe a little immature of him, but also? Hilarious. Bev would agree, he’s sure.

As per their agreement, Eddie mostly gives him free reign over the music. Richie blasts Johnny Cash and Zeppelin and Springsteen while Eddie rolls his eyes and informs him that his taste was at least two decades out of date back in the nineties and hasn’t changed since.

“This is road trip music, Eds!” Richie argues good-naturedly, cranking the volume up higher just to rile him up. “What do _you_ listen to?”

“Oh, um. I don’t really listen to music,” Eddie says, which is maybe the most baffling statement ever uttered by another human being. Richie suddenly remembers all the mixtapes he used to make for the other Losers back in high school, his favorite songs crammed onto cassette and gifted to his friends for birthdays or Christmases or just because. He wonders if Eddie kept any of them, if he even remembers Richie making them.

He dozes off somewhere in Pennsylvania, wakes up to Eddie singing softly along to The Doors. _This is the end, beautiful friend._ Richie smiles to himself, pretends he’s still asleep until after the song finishes.

They stop for the night in a basic but functional motel before they hit North Carolina, and Richie occupies himself by snapping a picture of the car and sending it to Bev, along with the caption _Beverly, meet Beverly._ The response comes within minutes: a single question mark that conveys her confusion as effectively as if she was standing right in front of him, and Richie bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from grinning as he types out a reply.

_Eddie’s car. He named it after you, apparently._

**_Well I’m flattered, but she’s much prettier than me._ **

_Nonsense. Nobody’s prettier than you, my dear._

Richie spends a second or two after he sends that last one debating whether he’s crossed into the realm of inappropriateness now that Beverly and Ben are an official item, but he quickly dismisses the thought. He and Bev have always joked around with each other like that, their flirtatious banter safe precisely because they both knew nothing would ever come of it. He’s pretty sure Ben knows it, too: _Richie_ isn’t the one he spent half his teenage years passive-aggressively fighting for Bev’s affections.

**_Not even Eddie?_ _;)_**

Richie’s face heats up as he stares at the message with its stupid wink face emoji, wondering just what the hell Bev thinks she’s implying. Well, he’s not an idiot: he _knows_ what she’s getting at, and he’s not even really all that surprised that she’s picked up on it, but being so blatantly called out makes him antsy.

 _You got me there,_ he types back, then turns his phone off before she can prod him any further. Still, something about her comment nags at him, and he spends the rest of the evening worrying at it like a loose tooth. For one thing, he’s not sure _pretty_ would be his first choice of word for describing Eddie. _Pretty_ implies a degree of femininity that just doesn’t translate to a flat chest and narrow hips and the light dusting of stubble that graces Eddie’s face every morning before he shaves. He may be small, but there’s a certain wiry strength about him all the same, and Richie feels confident that Eddie would sock him in the jaw if he ever dared call him _pretty_ to his face.

 _Cute_ used to be his go-to descriptor back in the day, but that doesn’t seem to fit anymore either. At least, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Eddie is certainly _capable_ of being cute, when he scrunches his nose at one of Richie’s jokes or starts talking to his car like it’s a sentient being, but the fact remains that he isn’t a kid anymore, nor is he a puppy or a kitten. He’s a grown-ass man with a successful business and a hell of a lot of money, and for Richie to carry on calling him cute and pinching his cheeks like they’re still thirteen years old seems almost condescending, like he’s dismissing everything that Eddie has achieved.

In Hollywood, he’d probably be labeled _unconventionally attractive;_ a backhanded compliment that Richie is more than familiar with, having placed third on a ‘Weird Celebrity Crushes’ listicle just last year. There’s no getting away from the fact that short, sickly Eddie would stand out like a sore thumb amongst the cookie-cutter Beautiful People of L.A., but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He’d probably still be considered more attractive than Richie, conventionally or otherwise, with his sweet face and run-your-fingers-through-it hair that falls in waves over his big brown eyes.

Yeah, okay. Maybe Richie’s a little smitten. _Fuck you, Bev._

Before they head out the following morning, Richie shaves off the moustache that’s become integral to his public image on a whim. He mostly does it to make himself less recognizable to the general public, but Eddie making no secret of the fact that he thinks it looks ridiculous might have something to do with it, too. And what the hell, maybe it’s time for a change anyway. Studying his reflection in the mirror, Richie decides that he looks younger clean-shaven; fresher. It was a good call.

“You shaved,” Eddie remarks when he emerges from the bathroom, blinking up at him in apparent shock.

“You know, Eds, of all your many talents it’s always been your observational skills that impressed me most.”

“You, um. You look nice.”

Richie gives an exaggerated gasp and clutches his hand to his heart, mostly to cover up how ridiculously _pleased_ he is. “Was that a compliment? From my Eddie Spaghetti? I’m swooning.”

“And I regret it already,” Eddie says, but he’s biting his lip in that way that means he’s trying not to smile, and Richie notes with some interest that his cheeks are tinged faintly pink.

The air in the car gets hotter and more uncomfortable the further south they get, to the point where Richie feels stifled even with the windows rolled all the way down. Not only that, but his apprehension returns double once they get on the road again, and he finds that he doesn’t even have the energy to needle at Eddie anymore. Instead, he pretends to be engrossed in the book he’s reading, Bill’s handsome author’s photograph adorning the back cover. As it turns out, Bill Denbrough is one of the most prolific horror writers currently working in America, with over twenty titles to his name, and Richie intends to work his way through every last one of them. Even the one about the diarrhea aliens.

He can tell that Eddie is concerned by the way he keeps glancing over at him, rambling incessantly about nothing in particular in an apparent need to fill the silence. Richie mostly tunes him out, but he finds the background noise oddly soothing all the same. He also finds it vaguely amusing that _he’s_ the one with the reputation for never shutting up, when Eddie is like a runaway train once he gets going.

They stop for gas just short of the Georgia border, and Eddie surprises the hell out of him by tossing him the keys. “You wanna drive the last stretch?”

“You serious?”

Eddie shrugs, already climbing in the passenger side. “I’m tired. And you’ve got to take the wheel at some point. Sixty-forty, remember?”

Richie is expecting some serious backseat driving, but Eddie just rests his head against the window, either asleep or doing a damn good job of faking it within minutes. He wakes maybe half an hour later with a slightly panicked expression, wheezing and reaching for the inhaler he keeps in the glove compartment.

“You okay?” It’s a dumb fucking question. Richie’s been having enough nightmares of his own lately to recognize the signs.

“Fine,” Eddie says curtly. “Stop riding the clutch so hard.”

“I’ll ride _your_ clutch hard,” Richie mumbles – which doesn’t even fucking make sense, but Eddie lets it go with nothing more than a roll of his eyes. Richie turns the radio on to break up the tense silence; it’s playing mindless bubblegum pop, but he can’t be bothered to search for something more suited to his tastes. Besides, it’s just irritatingly catchy enough to drown out the thoughts still churning away in his head.

Eddie doesn’t say anything. They drive.

* * *

By the age of forty, Eddie’s grown much more accustomed to visiting graves than he would really have liked. After his dad died, his mother dragged him out to the cemetery several times a year, and he’d try to summon up memories of a man he barely knew while she described to him in graphic detail exactly what cancer did to the human body. Decades later, when Sonia herself finally succumbed to a lifetime of junk food and immobility, he attended a lonely funeral and tried to convince himself he felt something other than vague relief. There were others, too: Georgie Denbrough stands out in his mind, Bill sobbing into his shoulder when they finally buried what was left of him. Various aunts, uncles and grandparents, distant relatives with whom he had no real connection but was forced to pay his respects to nonetheless. 

He’s seen more than his share of death, but he still isn’t sure how he’s supposed to feel now, standing at the grave of one of his closest childhood friends. A boy he hasn’t seen since he was a teenager, a boy he didn’t even _remember_ until recently, but one who was so much a part of him that he feels the loss more keenly than he did either of his parents. None of his past experiences could have prepared him for this.

Mike had sent them the plot number and the name of the cemetery using what Richie called his librarian-fu and normal people called the internet. There isn’t even a headstone yet, just a small collection of regular stones atop a pile of freshly dug earth, and Eddie honestly isn’t sure whether it’s because they’re honoring tradition or just because the death is so recent that they haven’t had time to get a stone made yet. He vaguely remembers Stan mentioning going to an unveiling ceremony for some uncle back when they were kids, but he hadn’t paid it much mind at the time.

“Stan would hate this, you know,” Richie muses as they each add their own stone to the pile. “He’d say that we were doing it wrong, or be pissed that our stones were different sizes or something.”

For some reason, Eddie is reminded of himself and Richie at age thirteen, incessantly bugging Stan about his upcoming bar mitzvah – _they cut the tip of his dick off!_ – and feels an odd pang of guilt over their past insensitivity. They were obnoxious, ignorant little shitheads, but Stan always took it in stride, patiently explaining his cultural rites or else making self-deprecating jokes at his own expense. Now, Eddie wonders just how othering that must have felt, to have even his own friends constantly singling him out as different. The knowledge that it was the same with all of them, that it was just as likely for Bill’s stutter or Ben’s weight or Eddie’s asthma to be the butt of the joke on any given day, doesn’t really make him feel much better. Kids are decidedly cruel, and looking back he realizes that they were no exception despite their outsider status.

He runs a hand through his hair, grimacing at the sweat beading on his forehead. It’s swelteringly hot, the air thick and soupy, and having grown up in Maine and spent much of his adult life in New York Eddie is entirely unequipped to deal with it. It’s small consolation that Richie looks almost more uncomfortable than he does, hair frizzing wildly in the humidity and glasses sliding down his nose.

This whole thing had been Richie’s idea, but Eddie knows him well enough to know that he isn’t handling it nearly as well as he pretends. Richie and Stan had been friends long before Eddie met either of them, and yet he’d hardly reacted to the news of Stan’s death back in Derry. Which is precisely how Eddie knows to be worried; Richie is often vocal about expressing himself, but it’s ninety percent theatrics. It’s when he gets quiet and contemplative that there’s cause for concern.

Eddie wants to comfort him, but he has no idea what to say, how to even begin getting Richie to open up. _Are you okay_ is fucking stupid. _How are you feeling_ is just patronizing, and too reminiscent of a therapist he had back in tenth grade. He just doesn’t know how to reach out and close the distance between them, and he’s starting to realize that for all he and Richie could talk for hours about absolute nonsense, they were never much good at addressing the things that really matter.

“Excuse me?”

Eddie jumps at the interruption, a small woman with dark curly hair hurrying towards them. She looks to be around his own age, and although she’s reasonably attractive, her face is drawn and exhausted looking. She’s dressed all in black and has the same general air of despair and defeat that Bill had worn while cradling Audra’s lifeless body in the sewers, and suddenly Eddie knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's looking at Stan’s wife.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt,” she says, “I just… did you know my Stanley?”

“We went to school together,” Eddie explains, once it becomes clear that Richie isn’t going to answer the question. He isn’t even sure that Richie _heard_ it; he’s staring mutely at the woman as though looking at a ghost. “I’m Eddie Kaspbrak, this is Richie Tozier. We heard about what happened and wanted to come pay our respects.”

It doesn’t occur to him that it might not be the best idea to use Richie’s full name until it’s too late. The woman does a double-take, her eyes lighting with recognition as she gives him the once over.

“Richie _Tozier?_ Oh my God, it _is_ you. I didn’t recognize you without your…” she gestures vaguely at his newly-shaved face. “Stanley and I used to listen to your show all the time. He never mentioned that he knew you.”

Richie blinks, seemingly pulling himself out of his stupor. “It was a long time ago. He probably forgot.” He gives an odd, mirthless chuckle; Eddie winces, but the woman doesn’t seem to notice.

“I’m sorry, where are my manners? I’m Patty Uris. Stan is – _was_ – my husband.” Eddie feels a wave of sympathy for her as she corrects her use of the present tense, and it hits him all over again just how _fresh_ Stan’s loss is. “Why don’t you boys come over for tea?”

“Oh no, we wouldn’t want to impose—"

Patty smiles, weary but genuine so far as Eddie can tell. “Honestly, I could use the company. I just finished sitting shiva, and I’m not used to an empty house. Besides, Stan never really talked much about his childhood; I’d love to hear some stories from his school days.”

Eddie looks over at Richie helplessly, but it seems that Richie is already lost in his own thoughts again, his brow furrowed as he stares at Stan’s grave. Patty is still watching them expectantly, and Eddie finds that he doesn’t have the heart to turn her down, even if everything in him is screaming that this is a bad idea.

\--

Stan’s house is every bit as clean and tidy as Eddie would have expected from a boy who used to iron his socks, but unlike his own place back in New York, it actually feels like a home; warm and inviting, with photographs proudly displayed on every available surface. Stan grew up handsome, Eddie thinks, and wishes they’d gotten the chance to know each other as adults. To him, Stan will be forever as he was the last time Eddie saw him, eighteen years old and about to leave for college.

Only, that isn’t quite true, is it? The last time he saw Stan was almost two weeks ago, his severed head in Mike’s fridge taunting them with a rictus grin. _How’s your sex life, Wheezy?_

“You have a lovely home, Mrs. Uris,” Eddie says, suppressing a shudder and forcing the thought from his mind. Richie is still uncharacteristically quiet, leaving the small talk down to him. It isn’t a skill he’s particularly proficient in, and the feeble attempts at conversation sound stilted even to his own ears. He tries not to grimace as he takes a sip of his too-sweet tea.

“Stan loved this house,” she says quietly. “He signed the lease on the first viewing; I was so mad at him ‘cause I hadn’t even seen it yet, but he just told me _this is the one, I know it._ And he was right, I fell in love with it straight away. He was like that sometimes, you know? Always seemed to know about things before they happened. Spooky, I used to call him.”

Eddie wants to laugh at that, the idea of serious, skeptical Stan Uris, who was always the last to believe in anything remotely supernatural, being considered _spooky._ Richie seems to feel the same way, scoffing a little under his breath; Eddie shoots him a warning glare, but Patty either doesn’t notice or pretends not to.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you, actually,” she’s saying, and before Eddie has time to wonder what _that_ means she’s grabbing a book from the coffee table, pulling an old photograph from between its pages and handing it over for them to see. Eddie feels his throat constrict once he realizes what he’s looking at, recognition hitting him like a punch to the gut. Beside him, Richie stiffens with shock.

The photograph is of them: all seven members of the Losers Club at maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, stood outside Stan’s childhood home in their summer clothes. Something squeezes painfully in his chest as he stares down at his own teenaged face; he’s been caught mid-laugh, head thrown back and eyes scrunched closed like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Richie has an arm draped over him, mouth half-open like he’s partway through telling some dumb joke, and on Richie’s other side is Stan, lips slanted upward in the way that always meant he was trying not to show his amusement, the scars on his face just barely visible. Then there’s Mike and Bill, grinning proudly with their arms around each other’s shoulders, and then Beverly on one of her rare visits from Portland, her hair short and glowing fiercely in the sun. At the far end of the lineup is Ben, caught in some transitional phase between the chubby thirteen-year-old they first met back in ‘89 and the muscular adult of today, squinting awkwardly at the camera.

Seeing them all like that, the memory comes back to Eddie in a rush. Stan had been given the camera for his birthday a few months previous; ostensibly for bird watching purposes, but most of his exploits as a photographer had involved snapping pics of his friends, a habit that they all pretended to find far more annoying than they actually did.

_“You know, Stan the Man, there’s just one problem with all these pictures of yours,” Richie commented one afternoon while they were all gathered at Stan’s house._

_“And what would that be?” Stan asked offhandedly, having clearly already dismissed whatever Richie’s answer would be._

_“You’re not in any of them, genius,” Richie said with a roll of his eyes, thumbing through the small collection of photographs Stan had already taken that summer. “A historian looking through these in a hundred years’ time would think there were only six of us in the club, not seven.”_

_“Okay, first of all, no historian a hundred years from now is going to care about pictures of a bunch of dumb teenagers,” Stan said. “Secondly, my role as photographer is to document. I’m the observer, not the subject.”_

_“Yeah, I call bullshit on that.”_

_“Richie has a point, Stan,” Mike cut in gently. “Maybe these aren’t important historical documents, but you were here too. Some future you might want to remember that one day.”_

_They all knew the real reason Stan didn’t want to be in any photographs, of course. Ever since his face got all slashed up a few years back (and for some reason, Eddie was fuzzy on the details of just_ how _exactly that had happened. A wild dog attack? Some madman with a knife?) his self-confidence had diminished to the point where he even avoided looking in mirrors if he could help it._ _Having his image recorded and preserved for posterity was out of the question._

_Which was why it seemed so important that they all worked together to wear him down over the next hour or so, until he was reluctantly handing the camera off to his mother as they lined up outside. He was still wound tight as anything – even with Richie stood between them, Eddie could feel the tension radiating from him, spreading down the line and infecting them all._

_Richie took this as his cue to do what he did best and lighten the mood, putting on the worst Southern accent any of them had ever heard and yelling at Stan’s mom, “Try not to be blinded by my beauty, sweet cheeks. I know I’m a handsome devil, but there’s six others here all vying for your attention.”_

_Eddie couldn’t help it: it was so inappropriate, and he was so on edge, that the laughter was bursting out of him without warning, bubbling up from deep inside his chest. Richie beamed with pride and threw an arm around his shoulders, dragging him closer, and their giddiness rippled through the rest of the group until even Mrs. Uris was struggling not to laugh as she took the picture._

“I found it while I was going through some of Stan’s old things,” Patty is saying. Eddie blinks, shaking off the memory. “I didn’t think anything of it at first, but then…” She takes the photograph from Eddie’s hold and flips it over. On the back, written in neat cursive, is the caption _Eddie, Richie, Mike, Bill, Beverly and Ben. The Losers Club. July 1992._

“Eddie and Richie – I’m guessing that’s you two,” Patty says, almost to herself. “And ‘Bill’ is Bill Denbrough? The writer? Stanley found out about him a few months back and started reading his books, talking about trying to get in contact with him. He was almost obsessed.”

Eddie glances at Richie, sees his own surprise and wariness mirrored in the other man’s expression. “Mrs. Uris, you said there was something you wanted to ask…?”

Patty looks up at him, her expression almost frantic. “This ‘Mike’, is that Mike Hanlon? The one who called before Stan… before he died?”

Suddenly it’s difficult to breathe. Eddie grips his inhaler inside his pocket, feeling the edges of the plastic dig into his palm. “Yes.”

“I don’t suppose you know what it was about? The phone call?”

“You’d have to ask Mike about that,” he lies, feeling like a piece of shit as he does it. Still, it’s not as though he could tell her the truth: _oh, nothing, he was just asking your husband to come home and help us fight an evil child-eating clown. No big._

Patty looks at him appraisingly for a moment before nodding to herself, and Eddie isn’t sure if she bought it or if she just wasn’t expecting him to tell the truth. “I don’t blame him, you know. Your friend Mike Hanlon, whoever he is. I wish I could, but whatever he said, nobody made Stan take that razor to his wrists. I just want to know _why._ There was no warning, no reason to think that… we were talking about looking into adoption. We were _happy.”_

Her voice rises throughout her speech until she’s sobbing between words. Eddie places an awkward hand on her shoulder, unsure of how to give comfort, unsure of whether that’s something she’d even accept from him, a perfect stranger. Surprisingly, given his uncharacteristic silence that’s persisted since the cemetery, it’s Richie who speaks first.

“Mrs. Uris, I’m so sorry. Maybe we should go.”

“No, please,” she sniffs, brushing stray years from her face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall apart. It’s just hard, you know? Sometimes I still expect him to come walking through the door like nothing’s happened.”

Eddie gets it. Even now, there’s a part of him that simply refuses to believe Stan is really gone.

“What was he like, back then?” Patty nods towards the picture, and Eddie stares down at Stan’s grainy face, trying to remember. Stan was always the rational one, and before Bev, Mike and Ben joined the group he was often their sole voice of reason among Bill’s stubbornness, Richie’s hyperactivity and Eddie’s neuroticism. He thinks now that they probably took it for granted just how much they needed that calm, logical presence. It got annoying at times, sure, but where he and Richie riled each other up, Stan brought them back down to earth.

“He was quiet, I guess. Serious. But he had this real dry sense of humor, you know? Like every so often he’d come out with something totally unexpected, and he’d be so deadpan about it that it’d have us all in stitches for weeks.”

Richie stands abruptly, knocking into the coffee table as he does so and making Patty jump. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly. There’s a horrible, conflicted look on his face that sets off all kinds of alarm bells ringing inside Eddie’s head. He’s been far too quiet for far too long. “Bathroom?”

“Oh.” Patty collects herself, smoothing down her skirt. “Straight up the stairs, second door on the right.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

  _It wasn’t difficult for Richie to find Stan after he had a meltdown of epic proportions and stormed out his own bar mitzvah. Really, there were only two places he would go: the Barrens were out of the question after the events of the last few weeks, so Richie tracked him down to the memorial park where he often went to watch his beloved birds._

_“I didn’t know you had it in you, Stanley. That was fucking incredible.”_

_He was expecting a glare, some snide comment to put him back in his place, but Stan just groaned and buried his face in his hands. “My dad’s gonna kill me.”_

_Richie sat down awkwardly on the bench next to him, wondering whether they should hug or something. He wasn’t any good at this emotional crap, but things were weird after everything that had gone down at the Neibolt house. The Losers Club had effectively disbanded, with Ben, Beverly and Mike disappearing back to whatever solitary lives they’d led before. Eddie was being kept under lock and key by his mountain troll of a mother, and Bill wasn’t even speaking to him, which pretty much left Stan as his only friend right now._

_“I don’t think he’s gonna kill you. He might chop your balls off and lock you in the basement until you’re twenty, but he won’t_ kill _you.”_

_“Beep beep, Richie,” Stan said, muffled by his hands. He looked up at Richie then, his gaze oddly searching. “You’re the only one who came.”_

_“I’m sure they didn’t mean anything by it,” Richie started uncomfortably. “Eddie’s basically a prisoner, and Bill –"_

_“Is so wrapped up in his insane suicide mission that he probably didn’t even realize what day it is,” Stan said, only a little bitter. “It’s fine.”_

_“Stan –"_

_“_ Richie, _” Stan cut in, exasperated. “I don’t give a shit. You came. They didn’t.” A beat. “I’m trying to thank you, dumbass. I know it can’t have been easy for you, sitting still and keeping your mouth shut for longer than thirty seconds.”_

 _“It_ was _pretty torturous,” Richie agreed. “Sitting next to your mom helped to take the edge off, though. I’d watch_ that _bird all day long, if you know what I mean.”_

_Stan punched him in the arm with a sort of outraged squawk that had Richie in fits of laughter. “I hate you so much.”_

_“No you don’t.”_

\--

Richie leans his head against the cool porcelain as he finishes throwing up the meagre amount of food he’s eaten, forcing himself to take deep breaths and willing his stomach to stop churning. It’s too much, being in this house, listening to Patty; everything reminding him of Stan, with his scars and his birds and his bone-dry wit. Stan, who they couldn’t save.

Richie loves all the Losers equally – albeit in different ways – but Stan was his first friend, and for a long time, his only friend. Long before there was the Losers Club, before they even met Bill and Eddie, there was Richie and Stan. They grew up on the same street together, their mothers round at each other’s houses for tea most nights a week. On paper, it shouldn’t have worked – the rowdy, messy brat who careened about the place like a bull in a china shop and the buttoned-down Jewish boy who acted like an adult in a kid’s body – but for whatever reason, they just clicked.

Stan was never quite the same after their first face-off with the clown, after that creepy portrait lady mutilated him. He would avoid looking in mirrors and refuse to be captured on film; the scars eventually faded along with their memories but they never disappeared completely, and Stan had confided in him once that it wasn’t so much the aesthetics that bothered him, but that the marks were a visual reminder of something terrible happening to him that he couldn’t quite remember.

Forcing himself back to the here and now, Richie stands, wiping at his face with the back of his hand and grimacing at the taste in his mouth. Looking around, it becomes clear that while the Urises’ bathroom is as clean as the rest of the house, it lacks the cozy warmth of downstairs. It feels almost clinical, and it hits Richie all at once that this is where Stan did it. He tries to picture it: Stan sitting in the bathtub, cutting into his own wrists with neat, precise lines; if he squints, he imagines he can still see faint impressions of blood staining the walls, even though the tiles are gleaming white, scrubbed and polished to within an inch of their lives.

 _Jesus, Stan, why’d you do it?_ Richie isn’t stupid: he _knows_ why Stan did it. Hell, he’d be lying if he said the thought hadn’t crossed his own mind once or twice after Mike had called him, and from what Patty had been saying, it sounded like Stan had managed to hold onto more of his memories than the rest of them. Out of all them, he’d always struggled the most to accept Its existence; even as a kid, he’d always hated anything that couldn’t be neatly explained by science or reason. There was simply no room for such things within his worldview, and anytime that worldview was threatened he was rendered unable to cope. Richie can only assume that remembering It as an adult had been more than he could handle.

He wants to be sick again, his vision going grey at the edges, and he grips the side of the sink for support as his knees threaten to give way. It seems like a monumental effort just to breathe, and Richie wonders vaguely whether this is how Eddie feels every time he has one of his “asthma attacks”. If so, it’s hardly surprising that he spent so long genuinely believing they could kill him.

It’s as if thinking about Eddie has somehow summoned him, because Richie’s imminent mental breakdown is interrupted by a frantic knocking at the bathroom door. “Richie? You okay in there?”

Richie bites back the almost hysterical laugh that threatens to escape him, takes a steadying breath and opens the door on Eddie’s concerned face.

“Jesus, Rich, you look like shit.”

“I’m so sorry,” Patty says weakly. She’s hovering just behind Eddie, her own face ashen and horrified. “That bathroom, I should’ve said –“

For some reason the idea that she should be apologizing to him makes Richie feel unbearably guilty, and suddenly he can’t stand to remain in this house a moment longer. “It’s fine, I just – I need to go.”

With that, he pushes past the both of them and makes his escape, taking the stairs two at a time and not stopping until he’s out the front door, gulping in lungfuls of fresh air like he’s just surfaced from being underwater. He doesn’t think he’s wanted a smoke this badly since he got Mike’s phone call, and he’s fumbling with his lighter when Eddie comes out of the house a few minutes later. They stare at one another for a long moment, and Richie feels weirdly like he’s been caught even though he has no reason to, and his hands are shaking so badly that he can’t even light his damn cigarette, the flame guttering and dying. Eddie doesn’t even say anything, just steps up close and takes the lighter from him, clicking the flame back into existence and holding it steady for him to light up.

“What, no lecture about how I’m gonna die of lung cancer?” Richie asks once he’s taken a hit of sweet, sweet nicotine.

“I think you’re old enough by now to know what that shit is doing to your body without hearing it from me,” Eddie says evenly, passing the lighter back to him. “I’m not your mother. Or mine, for that matter.”

That actually makes him feel worse than if Eddie had laid into him, and he scowls down at his shoes as he takes another drag, feeling like a petulant child. Beside him, Eddie takes a brown bottle from his coat pocket, shakes two small white pills out into his palm and swallows them dry.

“So you’re a pillhead now?” Richie asks, joking but not really joking at all. He’s been watching Eddie swallow medication since they were kids, and he doesn’t feel any better about it now than he did back then.

“It’s just aspirin,” Eddie says; a note too defensive, but Richie doesn’t press. It’s not like he’s in any position to judge.

“Is Patty okay?” he asks instead, jerking his head back towards the house. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”

Eddie shrugs. “I think she’s as okay as she can be, given the circumstances. She, uh. She gave me her number, actually, in case I think of anything that might be important.”

“Eddie, you dog. Comforting the widow, really?”

Sometimes, it’s like Richie’s mouth is operating on autopilot, just flinging words out there without consulting his brain first, and accusing his probably-gay friend who just got out of a toxic marriage of putting the moves on their _other_ friend’s grieving widow has to be up there among the most insensitive things he could possibly have said.

“Fuck you, Richie,” Eddie breathes, eyes going wide. “You know, just for the record, you’re being a total ass right now.”

“I know,” Richie says miserably. “I’m sorry, Jesus, I – can we please just leave?”

“Fine,” Eddie says tightly, already turning away from him. “Finish your cancer stick before you get in my car.”

They’re on the road for maybe five minutes before Eddie’s phone rings, shattering the tense silence that’s built up between them. “You want me to get that?” Richie asks, when Eddie clenches his hands around the steering wheel but otherwise shows no sign of responding.

“It’s probably just Myra,” Eddie mutters, but tosses his phone to Richie anyways. Richie isn't really in the mood to deal with Eddie’s screaming lunatic of a wife, and he’s about to hit decline when it dawns on him that the lined, handsome face looking back at him from the display belongs to none other than Mike Hanlon.

“Hey, Mikey!” He grins into the receiver, fumbling with the phone a little in his haste to accept the call. Eddie glances over at him sharply, slowing the car to a crawl.

“Richie?” Mike sounds a little confused, but after the day Richie’s had, that deep, pleasant voice is like music to his ears. “Is Eddie there?”

“What, I'm not good enough for you? He’s driving at the minute. Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker.”

As it turns out, Mike is calling to ask how their visit to Stan’s grave went, which shouldn’t really be a surprise since he’s the one who gave them the intel in the first place, but still scuppers Richie’s hopes for a change of topic.

“I spoke to her, you know,” Mike says eventually, once they’ve finished filling him in. Richie winces at the weight of self-loathing evident in his voice. “Patty. Back in Derry, when I called to see where Stan was, she’s the one who answered the phone. I don’t think she realized who I was…”

“It wasn’t your fault, Mike,” Richie cuts in firmly.

“Wasn’t it? If I hadn’t made that phone call, Stan would still be alive right now. I knew there was a chance not all of you would make it, and I made those calls anyway.”

“You were just doing what you had to do,” Eddie says. “A lot more people would’ve died if you hadn’t.”

“I knew what it did to him the first time around, going into those sewers,” Mike protests, their reassurances falling on deaf ears. “I should’ve just left him to his life. We would’ve managed okay without him. We _did_ manage okay without him.”

“You don’t know that,” Richie points out. “Maybe we would’ve got things done quicker with all seven of us. Or maybe Stan would’ve suffered an even worse fate if he’d been there. We can’t know anything for sure.”

“How philosophical of you.” Despite the seriousness of the conversation, Richie can hear a touch of amusement in Mike’s voice through the phone. He’s aware of Eddie watching him curiously, but he ignores it. He can’t deal with Mike’s crisis and his own all at once, not if he wants to keep what’s left of his sanity. “Shit, maybe you’re right. I still feel guilty as hell, though.”

“Of course I’m right, Michael. Now tell us, how are things on the home front?”

 “Well, I’m a free man again. They let me out of the hospital yesterday morning.”

“Mike, that’s great news!” Eddie says, practically radiating earnest excitement on behalf of their friend. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

“I’m telling you now, aren’t I? I figured you probably had enough on your plate for the moment.”

“So what are you gonna do now?” Richie asks, curious in spite of himself. What _do_ you do once your life’s work is over? “Travel the world? Find some hot librarian chick to settle down and have kids with?”

Mike snorts down the line. “Sounds tempting, but no. I think I’m gonna stay in Derry, help to rebuild. We caused a lot of damage, and it’s going to take a long time to get things back to the way they were.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Richie frowns. He shares a glance with Eddie, who looks just as confused as he feels. “You’ve been watching the lighthouse for the last thirty years, Mike. Hell, there isn’t even a lighthouse left to watch anymore. If anyone’s earned their retirement, it’s you.”

“That may be so, but I’ve still got to undergo physical therapy here, and like I said, there’s a lot of rebuilding needs to be done. This town is my home, and I know it’s got its ugly side, but there’s still a lot of good people here, too.”

 _Well, shit._ Richie squirms uncomfortably in his seat, suddenly feeling like the most selfish ass on the planet. “You’re a better man than me, Mikey.”

“Me too,” Eddie chimes in.

“Well, I don’t know about that. We all deal in different ways.”

They talk for a little while longer after that. Mike informs them that Bill has taken Audra back to some private facility in England; Richie is a little hurt that Bill hadn’t bothered getting in touch to tell them himself, but figures he can forgive him for being preoccupied, given the circumstances. Then Mike is saying his goodbyes and hanging up with strict instructions to stay in touch, and silence descends on the car once more.

“Did you mean what you said to Mike?” Eddie asks eventually, just as Richie is about to make some dumb joke to break the tension. “That what happened to Stan wasn't his fault?”

“Yeah, of course,” Richie frowns, wondering where this is going.

“Then you know it wasn’t your fault, either? That there’s literally nothing any of us could have done to predict or change things?”

And the thing is, Richie _does_ know that, at least on an intellectual level. But knowing it and feeling it are two separate things, and he can’t help feeling that he’s let Stan down somehow. “Don’t, Eddie,” he warns, and he feels like a piece of shit because he knows that he isn’t the only one grieving, that maybe Eddie needs to actually _talk_ about this stuff – but Richie can’t. He’s spent his entire life bottling shit up, hiding behind a glib smile and dressing his secrets up as punchlines so that they can’t hurt him. If he opens the floodgates now, he might not be able to stop all that ugliness from pouring out. “I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie says softly, and his eyes are so full of sympathy and understand that Richie wants to cry, just a little. “You don’t have to. But if you change your mind… you can talk to me, you know?”

"Thanks," Richie doesn't mean for it to sound insincere, but it still comes out that way. He turns up the radio to signal the end of the conversation, ignoring the extra stab of guilt he feels at Eddie's sigh.

\--

Richie dreams of Stan that night. Not the Stan from the photographs in Patty’s front room, but Stan as he was at thirteen: all curly hair and skinny limbs, covered in blood and staring at Richie with blank, accusing eyes. At some point, Stan turns into Eddie, bleeding and dying and begging Richie to help him, and that’s when Richie wakes up covered in sweat and breathing like he’s just run a marathon.

There’s some shuffling from across the room, and in his half-asleep state Richie just about has a heart attack until he remembers that they’d ended up getting a double; the only room available at the first motel they could find. The lamp clicks on, Eddie squinting at him blearily across the gulf between their beds.

“Richie? You okay?”

Richie opens his mouth to say something along the lines of _never better, go back to sleep,_ but what comes out instead is an ugly, desperate sound somewhere between a gasp and a cry, torn from deep within his chest. It’s like the dam has finally burst, everything hitting him all at once; not just Stan, but everything they went through back in Derry. He can’t even _remember_ the last time he cried, but he can’t seem to stop himself now, his breath coming in hitching sobs that only get more and more violent.

Before he knows what happening, Eddie has crossed over to his bed, putting a tentative arm around his shoulders, and he doesn’t want Eddie to see him like this but he instinctually turns into the embrace, hiding his face against Eddie’s neck like a child. Eddie is murmuring vague, comforting nonsense above him, sifting his fingers through Richie’s hair, and Richie has the distant thought that it isn’t supposed to be this way, isn’t supposed to be Eddie holding _him_ together.

 _Why? Because he’s a fragile flower who needs your protection?_ That’s so far from the truth it’s almost laughable. Eddie’s the strong one, he always has been. Strong enough to carry Richie’s pathetic ass, that’s for sure.

He pulls away once he’s tired himself out, sniffing and avoiding Eddie’s concerned gaze. He’s embarrassed, yes, but he also feels… cleansed. He doesn’t know how else to describe it, but it isn’t entirely unpleasant.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he says once he feels capable of human speech. “I don’t know where that came from.”

“It’s fine,” Eddie waves him off. Chancing a glance at his face, Richie sees that his eyes are suspiciously red-rimmed, like Richie hasn’t been the only one crying. Weirdly, that actually makes him feel a little better. “I have a feeling it was probably overdue.”

“I miss him,” Richie blurts out, startling even himself with his unprompted honesty.

“I know,” Eddie smiles sadly. “I do, too. He probably deserved a medal or something for putting up with us back them.”

“He didn’t mind, not really.” Richie wipes at his eyes. “Jesus, some vacation this is turning out to be. First your lovely wife, and now this. I’m honestly not sure I can take much more excitement.”

Eddie snorts a laugh, apparently choosing to ignore Richie’s dig at Myra. “We should start heading towards Chicago in the morning, see if we can’t drop in on Bev.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Eddie makes as if to get up and head back to his own bed, but Richie grabs his wrist to stop him. “Stay.”

Eddie freezes, deer in headlights style. Richie can feel his pulse spike beneath his fingers, and for a second he thinks that Eddie is going to freak out and bolt on him, but then he nods slowly, settling back down again. From this close, Richie doesn’t need his glasses to make out the freckles on Eddie’s nose or the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. He’s blushing like crazy, hair still wrecked from sleep, and suddenly Richie has the perfect Eddie-descriptor that had been eluding him the day before. _Beautiful._ Eddie is beautiful.

He turns out the light, and they lay side-by-side in silence for what feels like an eternity, carefully not touching anywhere but close enough that he can feel Eddie’s body heat. He’s hyper-aware of Eddie beside him, unnaturally stiff, eyes too tightly scrunched and breathing too controlled for him to truly be asleep. Acting on a childish, irresistible impulse, Richie stretches out a finger and pokes him in the cheek.

“What the _fuck,_ Richie?” Eddie demands immediately, dropping the pretense to glare at him.

“I _knew_ you were awake!” Richie crows. Before he can lose his nerve, he slips an arm around Eddie’s waist and tugs him closer until his head is pillowed on Richie’s chest, closing the gap between them. “This is better, right?”

Eddie doesn’t say anything, but the tension bleeds from him in increments as Richie draws soothing patterns against his side. Richie’s own exhaustion hits him like a freight train, and he’s on the verge of sleep when one last thought occurs to him.

“Hey, Eds?”

“Hmm?”

“Thanks for letting me use you as a human tissue. I'm pretty sure I got snot on your shirt, so you're a true friend.”

Eddie laughs, the sound of it muffled against Richie’s t-shirt. “Anytime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I remember Stan and Patty aren't particularly devout in the book, but I tried to keep this fairly accurate to Jewish funeral traditions. Given the timeframe I'm working with here, Stan would've had to be buried within a day or two of his death in order for shiva to be over by the time Richie and Eddie get to Atlanta, but just go with it.
> 
> Also, Patty Uris is a literal angel who deserves the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't very often write long fics, so this is kind of new territory for me. I do have the rest of the chapters planned out so hopefully there won't be too long to wait between updates, but we'll see.
> 
> Feel free to hmu on tumblr @gayeddiek.


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